


A Fever Dream

by brokenlittleboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Bottom Sam, Bottom Sam Winchester, Case Fic, Djinni & Genies, Djinnverse (Supernatural), Dream Sex, Episode: s02e20 What Is and What Should Never Be, First Time, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Healing, Injury, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Physical Therapy, Pining, Psychic kids, Requited Unrequited Love, Reveal, Road Trips, Season/Series 02, Suicide Attempt, Top Dean Winchester, Top Dean Winchester/Bottom Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:09:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 32,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20390977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenlittleboy/pseuds/brokenlittleboy
Summary: Sam should have known it was too good to be true.Unofficially for the 2019 SPN J2 Bigbang (didn't sign up in time, wrote it anyway).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete and will be updated weekly on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
> 
> A new take on 2x20 What is and What Should Never Be, with Sam having the djinn dream.
> 
> Art by the wonderful transsammywinchester on Tumblr.

CHAPTER ONE

Sam’s head was so heavy.

He’d felt like this many times before and it never got any easier. Hit on the head by a shifter, thrown into a tombstone by a ghost, knocked around by a macho guy at the bar.

His head hurt, pulsing like there was mercury sloshing between his ears, ringing slow and steady, making his teeth grind, tongue like lead.

He blinked owlishly. His head bobbed a few times like he was falling asleep. He finally gained enough control of his neck and eyes to get a discombobulated look at his surroundings.

He was in some sort of run down house. Could be anywhere. Anything could have happened. But where was--?

“Sammy,” a raspy voice gasped, and there we go.

Dean was up in his space a beat later, practically in Sam’s lap, holding Sam’s face up with his hands bracketing Sam’s jaw. He tilted Sam’s head right and left, squinting at the sluggish way Sam’s eyes tracked him. “Can you stand?”

“Mguh,” Sam said, when he was trying for “yeah.” Not a great start.

Dean got it, though, leaning forward, breath puffing warm against Sam’s throat. A moment later and Dean hauled him up, arms under Sam’s pits, swinging one of Sam’s arms around his back. They walked together, like they were in a potato sack race, like when Sam was in 5th grade.

He was put in the car. The vertigo once Dean merged onto the highway was intolerable and Sam faded.

The next thing he knew was warm water, the burn of soap and antiseptic, Dean picking splinters out of his knees and palms. His entire body was overheated, burning and achey, but he didn’t mind. He closed his eyes and let Dean’s firm hands massage the base of his skull while Dean washed his hair.

After that, it was off to bed, and Sam had enough sense by then to hook a pinkie in Dean’s shirt when Dean got up to go to the other bed. Dean stopped, looking down at him, but didn’t protest, sleeping back to back with Sam.

Sam slept hard and deep.

When he awoke, he felt alive. He hurt, but he wasn’t not lead, not brittle, not an ocean wave. Dean was gone from the bed, the other side of it cold. 

Sam sat up, stretching. He groaned involuntarily. Dean looked up from the kitchenette table, his jaw and hair struck gold by morning sun. He put down a bic pen. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Sam grunted. He mashed the base of his palm against his eye, knowing his hair was paying Einstein an homage right now. “What happened?”

Dean sipped coffee while Sam arthritically went through his morning routine. “What do you remember?”

“I… guh.” Every time Sam tried to remember, his headache spiked up again. He knew enough about testy lions and poking them with sticks to give that up for now. “Not much.”

Sam stepped out of his clothes and stumbled a little. Dean stood up. He snorted from somewhere behind Sam. “You got thrown around. More than usual, I mean,” he said. “It was a ghoul. And man, was she pissed. She took a liking to you.”

Sam moved into the bathroom to brush his teeth. It didn’t ring a bell, really, but he trusted Dean. He nodded, gargled, spit. “Did we get her?”

Dean was quiet for a moment. Sam looked up and caught Dean’s eyes in the mirror. Dean had an unreadable look on his face, frowning at a stitched up gash across Sam’s collarbone. It was going to leave a scar. “Yeah,” Dean said, quiet, and Sam recognized that tone of voice. He wouldn’t push it. It was a close one.

Dean was nice, further proof of Sam’s brush with death, and they took their time packing up. They stopped at a diner and didn’t hit the road until after lunch. Sam grabbed a newspaper along the way, he didn’t really remember where, but he was reading the obits as usual when something tingled at his spider senses.

“Hey, think I got something,” he muttered around the pencil he was chewing.

Dean looked over briefly, turning down the local classic rock station. “Yeah?”

“Heidi McLaughlin, 56,” Sam read out, adopting The Voice. “Found dead in her bathroom. Eyes removed. Cult symbol in the abdomen.”

“Huh,” Dean said. “Where abouts?”

“Dundee, Michigan,” Sam said. He had the maps out already, underneath the paper. He flipped to the one with the double doggy-eared top right corner. Found the town. “Three hours north.”

Dean moved to the lane heading north, and Sam leaned back in the seat, watching gas stations, rest stops, and McDonalds pass them by.

It felt normal.

Sam itched his neck idly. He could feel a prickling itch on one side that wouldn’t go away. The car swerved, almost changing lanes, and thank fuck it wasn’t rush hour. Sam gripped the door while Dean righted Baby’s path. “What the hell?”

“S-sorry.” To Dean’s credit, he sounded genuinely scrambled. “It’s just--your neck.”

Sam blinked at that, and waited patiently while Dean navigated to a rest stop. They headed into a single stall bathroom, and Sam winced at his appearance. He’d picked at a stitch without realizing, and a red line of blood dripped down his throat. Dean had that shuttered look again, and Sam’s heart pulled.

“I’m fine,” he said, almost by reflex. Dean nodded, reflex. 

“Sit,” Dean said, and Sam sat on the toilet seat while Dean silently cleaned him up.

It was a lot of touching, really, and usually, it wouldn’t grab Sam’s attention at all. Wasn’t a deviation from the norm for them. But something about Dean’s calloused fingertips caused Sam’s brain to focus, to pull out of daydreams. 

He couldn’t really tell what it was, what his brain was trying to say. It was just that. Dean’s fingers lingered, and Sam’s skin was hyperaware of it, buzzing long after Dean’s fingers had moved. 

Dean pulled back, frown of concentration in place, bunching his brows in that way Sam secretly liked. “Think you’re good,” Dean said, and backed up and out of Sam’s orbit.

Sam stood, less to leave the bathroom and more to return to Dean’s space. There’d been a subtle change in the atmosphere, ever since Sam woke up from that ghoul hunt. 

They walked out together, hip to hip, drawing a damning stare from the trucker heading in after them. Sam gave the trucker an unapologetic look. Right after the door slammed behind the guy, Dean snort-laughed. Sam blushed. He hadn’t thought Dean was in on it.

“S’his fault,” Sam said, and Dean laughed again, so Sam smiled. 

He guessed it was kind of funny.

***

It only took Dean two and a half hours to get to Dundee, and when they arrived, it was pouring. That was Michigan in the spring for you--half utopically pleasant, half downpour. Sam didn’t mind. It reminded him of the three months he and Dean spent living in a rental outside of Detroit playing an N64 the landlady left for them all day. Sam started seeing ducks in his sleep after that.

They found a motel easily enough. Dundee was along the highway, and kinda small, so the place they got was cheap and shitty. There was a bucket collecting rain from the ceiling. But hey, it didn’t dent the pool money too badly, and they’d definitely had worse.

They unpacked with their hoods up in silence, and, by the time they were done, they were soaked to the bone. Dean let Sam take first shower--Sam wondered when the post-you-almost-died niceties would stop--and Sam soaked in it, using up all the hot water just to push Dean. 

When he got out, he went straight to work. He could hear Dean bitching through the door while Dean showered and he grinned. 

Sam flopped onto the bed closest to the window. He watched 4 P.M. highway traffic zoom by while his laptop booted up, whirring and heating up his lap.

The first parts of a hunt were always pure tedium. Sam made a file, which meant a lot of downloading things, copying and pasting things, and converting things. He had a trusty USB that he carted to and from the library, printing out things to spread around the room. 

By the time Dean exited the shower, Sam’ had the USB full up on the first round of printapalooza and was ready to dig in deep at the library. Sam was about to chirp that to Dean when he stopped short.

Dean ambled out of the bathroom fully naked, absentmindedly rubbing his body down with the stained motel towel.

And it was a sight. 

Sam looked away quickly, but not before he glimpsed muscled upper arms, a hairy V between Dean’s legs. His face heated up and he felt so stupid, so useless and stupid. This wasn’t something to feel weird about. It wasn’t a weird thing. But the image stuck in Sam’s head all the same.

“Sammy,” Dean grunted, guttural, and Sam looked up. Dean was still naked. There was a look on his face Sam couldn’t decipher. They stare at each other for about four seconds and Sam didn’t know what the hell was happening. Dean came out of it, blinking, and cleared his throat.

He walked to the bed and put a pair of boxer briefs on. They didn’t leave much to the imagination. “What have you got so far?”

The question didn’t process in Sam’s brain at first, just mindless noises, kind of like Simlish, until Sam realized he was staring. “Oh,” he said, like an idiot, and turned back to the laptop. “Um, Heidi isn’t the first. The cops are trying to keep people from freaking out, not publicizing much. But there’s a pattern.”

Dean continued dressing. Sam could only breathe again once Dean’s hoodie was on. “Patterns are good,” Dean said. “Library?”

“Library,” Sam agreed, nodding, and he’d never felt more relieved to hear that word.

***

The moment after the shower faded from Sam’s memory once they dove headfirst into the case.

The repetition was kind of comforting--Sam knew exactly what to say, knew what Dean would say. Sam comforted witnesses while Dean pried. They talked to the cops. They wore plumber’s uniforms and searched for hex bags. Sam checked out occult books from the library while the librarian flirted with him, flaunting her tits and tattoos. 

Dean practically dragged Sam away from her, driving them across town to a diner he claimed advertised the state’s best malt shakes. Sam only had a sip of Dean’s, leaning over the table, but he had to admit, it was pretty good.

***

It wasn’t long before the hunt fell into place. An old man, the son of a witch, out for revenge against the children of the man that killed his mother. Misusing old spells and setting all sorts of whack shit free. Spirits that tore through ribcages and caused jarring hallucinations.

Sam and Dean both loathed witches. For Dean, it was a sanitary thing, but for Sam, it was just this… wrong feeling. That any human could dip into a well of darkness and get poisoned by it. That anyone could get the dark look in their eyes like the man had right before he threw a knife at Sam.

That didn’t process at first. Sam saw the flash of light, felt the air go from his lungs, but that was about it. He stared at the man in confusion while Dean screamed something at him.

Sam got real lightheaded real fast and stumbled. He hit the ground and heard a shot go out, then another, then another. 

In the back of his head, he was worried. One shot meant Dean got the guy. But more than one meant trouble.

The wall behind him was cold against his shoulder blades. “Dean…” he mumbled. 

He looked up just as Dean ran toward him. Dean slid onto his knees beside him, like a catcher diving toward home plate. Dean’s eyes were huge, flicking rapidly between Sam’s eyes and his stomach. “Jesus fuck, Sammy,” Dean said, and it was then that Sam began to feel it.

Pain. A deep, bruising pain, but from somewhere within. His hands went to his stomach and he felt heat. Heat and liquid. He looked down and saw his shirt was red. 

He’d been stabbed.

Sam laughed, and that made it hurt even worse, sharper. He hissed. “Oh, fuck.”

“How you doing?” Dean asked. He ripped his jacket off his shoulders and pressed it into Sam’s stomach, drawing a deep groan out of him.

“Mmgh… okay,” Sam managed, once the pain had passed. He wiggled his toes. He could still feel them. The one time he’d been stabbed deep enough to leave a gnarly scar and land him in the hospital, his toes had gone fuzzy. It was so fascinating that he’d fixated on it the whole ride over while John broke every speed limit in the county.

Sam stared at the ceiling while Dean gave him a brief once over. Dean laughed, smiling wet-eyed at Sam, and squeezed his shoulder. “You hit a vein,” he says, “but it’s not deep. Might not even scar if we’re careful.”

“Great,” Sam rumbled. Careful was one thing they weren’t. And he’d still lost a lot of blood, okay, so not every cylinder was firing.

Sam tried to stand, and the feeling that shot through his entire body pulled a moan out of him and had his eyes rolling up. Dean was touching him all over, brushing his hair back, smoothing out his jacket over his shoulders. “Jesus, fuck, Sammy, hold on,” Dean laughed. “I said shallow, I didn’t say not fuckin’ serious. You’re losing a lot of blood.”

Sam watched passively as Dean pulled out his phone and dialed three short numbers. The world was rocking slightly, like he was on a boat on calm waters. Dean’s voice scratched intermittently in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t pin down a single word.

Sam tried again to wiggle his toes. It was a little harder this time. 

“Sam? Sammy? Sammy?” Dean’s voice broke through the fog. Dean’s face filled his entire field of vision, and Sam smiled instinctively. It only deepened Dean’s frown. “Sammy, can you hear me?”

Sam yawned. “Jus’ be quiet,” he mumbled, closing his eyes.

“No, nuh-uh,” Dean said, shaking Sam by the shoulders. Boy was that annoying. Sam’s brain was like a marble in the bed of a truck driving through rocky terrain.

Ha. That was an oddly specific image. 

“Sammy, open your eyes,” Dean said. “Come on, damn it!”

Sam didn’t understand what Dean was so up in arms about. He was just going to take a short nap.

It didn’t take long for Dean’s voice to fade out completely.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

The first thing that came back to Sam was his toe. His left big toe, specifically. Then the others.

He wiggled them. His legs felt stiff. They were out straight. He was on his back. He moved his hand with caution… a finger covered with a monitor, a starchy blanket under his palm. The smell of antiseptic.

It was almost comical how familiar Sam was with waking up in a hospital and not knowing exactly how he got there.

His eyes cracked open, gummed up and sticky, and he squinted up at the ceiling. 

He felt mostly fine, just tired as shit, like he’d run forty marathons and sworn off sleeping for a month. His body was stiff when he tried to sit up. A weight on his left thigh he hadn’t notice disappeared and Dean’s head whipped up, his hair like a rat’s nest, eyes heavily bagged, like an overbooked flight.

“Sammy,” Dean gasped, his face splitting into a grin made ever wider by the mix of disbelief and relief on his face.

Before Sam could think about anything, or say anything, or move a pinky toe, Dean was reaching forward. Dean planted a rough, brief kiss on Sam’s lips before pressing his forehead to Sam’s, breathing heavily. “Fuck. Sammy, I didn’t mean--”

Sam was having a little trouble keeping up. He licked his buzzing lips. “What--” he coughed, a little baby bird of a cough. “What happened?” Deja vu.

Dean pulled back. He dropped back into his seat. His hand still lingered at the edge of Sam’s bed, brushing his thigh. His brow was furrowed, his eyes glassy, and seeing the fear on his face woke Sam up a little further.

“What do you remember?” Dean eventually croaked.

Sam had an odd feeling. “Stabbed,” he said. He looked down at his belly. “I got stabbed?”

“Yeah.” Dean laughed shortly, but he definitely didn’t find anything funny. “You lost a fuck ton of blood, Sammy. Like a frickin’ geyser.”

“Oh.” Dean’s weirdness suddenly made perfect sense. “Sorry.”

Dean laughed again. He leaned forward and ruffled Sam’s hair, drew him into a firm hug. Sat back. “S’not your fault,” he said. “Just glad you’re okay.”

Now mostly conscious, Sam was touched by Dean’s gestures, even if being kissed by your brother was really goddamn weird. “Hey,” he said, making sure Dean was looking at him. “I’m okay now.”

“You will be,” Dean said, nodding. “They’re gonna keep you overnight.”

“Okay.” Sam bit his lip. “Can you stay?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, Sammy. I’ll stay.”

***

Once the hospital was certain Sam was not in imminent danger of dying, and he’d gotten a blood transfusion or two, they set him free, at about eleven the next day.

Usually, that was early enough in the day that they’d pick a direction and hop onto the highway, Sam perusing local papers as they went until they found something in the water. 

This time, Dean was adamant about staying in their motel for one more night, for Sam’s sake. “I already paid it up,” he argued, “and I know how you feel about wasting money.”

Sam hated how much he couldn’t fight that. And, as much as he’d been trained to always keep moving no matter what, he was really goddamn tired. He hadn’t lost blood in a while, and he’d forgotten how much it could kick you on your ass.

So they stayed.

The moment Sam tried to mope, Dean was all up in his space with a veggie lovers’ pizza and a bunch of rental DVDs from Blockbuster. He’d even scrounged up one of Sam’s favorite but little known candy bars from somewhere, and Sam’s mouth watered when he saw the wrapper.

Damn Dean. Damn him for knowing Sam too well.

About half an hour later and they were cozied up on one of the queen beds together eating pizza right out of the box and making fun of _ The Fast and the Furious _.

“I could drive better than that,” Dean argued past a mouth full of pizza. He was even eating the vegetables. “Whole frickin’ movie about driving and they can’t drive.”

Sam snorted. “Pass me the water?”

Dean hummed his disapproval at the screen. He leaned over, eyes still glued on the T.V., and grabbed a water bottle from the nightstand. He passed it to Sam and Sam drank.

Dean glanced at him. “How you feeling?”

“Fine,” Sam answered.

“Your stomach?”

“Also fine.”

Dean didn’t seem to be satisfied. “Drink more water,” he said.

Sam rolled his eyes. The motherhenning was getting a little old. Still, he complied, making dramatic swallowing sounds to prove to Dean that he was hydrating.

He drank enough that his lips were wet when he was done, and he was panting slightly, gulping down air.

Dean was still staring at him, even as a super cool explosion blew up on screen, turning the dim motel room shades of yellow and orange.

Specifically, Dean was staring at his open mouth, his heaving shoulders.

Oh.

Sam remembered the hospital room, how fucked up Dean had been. He’d explained away the kiss, that Dean had been manic with fear that Sam almost died and his wires had crossed.

But this was a distinctly post-I-almost-died moment.

Sam swallowed, face overheated. He licked his lips. Dean had had about a thousand opportunities to look away or to save face. He hadn’t taken a single one.

“Uh,” Sam tried. “Dean?”

Dean’s eyes finally tore away from his lip and met his gaze. Dean blinked rapidly. “Uh,” he said dumbly. “What?”

It was now or never. Sam had to satisfy his curiosity. “You were kinda staring,” he said with a slight laugh, gesturing at his lips. “You okay?”

Dean looked away, back toward the T.V., but Sam could tell he wasn’t really watching the movie. “I’m fine,” Dean said.

“Nuh-uh,” Sam said. His heart was beating fast and his face was hot but he--he had to know. “Dean, look at me.”

Dean refused at first, still looking at the T.V., but after a beat, he tore his eyes away, meeting Sam’s glance. He only maintained eye contact for a few seconds before he looked down.

That was when Sam knew.

Dean was scared. Or ashamed. Or most likely both.

“Dean,” Sam repeated, and there was something in his tone that made Dean look back up.

It was now or never. “You kissed me,” Sam said, keeping his voice calm. “Back in the hospital.”

Sam could see in the fight that flashed across Dean’s face that Dean wanted to protest, wanted to diffuse, wanted to make something up, but he couldn’t, because they both knew the truth. 

“Why?” Sam asked.

That startled a rough little laugh out of Dean. “Why the hell does anyone kiss anyone?” he asked. “I was just freaked out, man. Can we focus on the movie? Vin Diesel’s about to do something badass.”

Dean grinned at him, so assholeish and cheesy and normal, and Dean was giving him the perfect out, an opportunity to go back to normal, but Sam didn’t want it.

Dean had been gentle these past few weeks. He’d been caring. And that was what made Dean kiss him. Not some freak explosion of endorphins or adrenaline or whatever.

And that was what Sam wanted. He wanted that so much more than their normal. He wanted it so badly he was willing to destroy their old concept of normal just to have it for a second.

It scared him, too. He was just as scared as Dean.

He hadn’t acknowledged these feelings to himself. He hadn’t dwelled on the worship he’d felt as a teenager, then the aching feelings later, and the softer ones now, mellowed out by time, not infatuation, not a crush, not sexual. 

Why does anyone kiss anyone, Dean had asked. 

“I want you,” Sam said, and Dean’s grin disappeared. “And I know you want me too.”

Dean’s face went dark. “Sammy--”

“Kiss me again,” Sam said, his voice a little shrill. He swallowed. “When I’m not all woozy on pain medication.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Dean hissed.

“Don’t take it back,” Sam begged. “Don’t pretend it never happened. Dean, please--”

Dean growled like an animal. He turned, pressing into Sam’s space, a hand tangling in Sam’s hair at the back of his skull and tugging. A moment later and Dean’s lips were on his, rough and desperate, teeth knocking against Sam’s.

Sam pulled back. Dean stared at him with dark eyes and wet lips, not saying anything.

“That’s not what I want,” Sam whispered. “I want this.”

He leaned forward. Slowly, so slowly that he got to watch Dean’s eyes flutter shut. He kissed Dean softly and soundly, pressing all of his feelings into the action, making it something sweet.

He let it linger, then backed up just enough to meet Dean’s eyes. Dean’s pupils were blown and his lids were lazy, and he was looking at Sam with a drunk kind of wonder. 

“The way you’ve been these past few weeks…” Sam trailed off, whispering against Dean’s lips. He put his arms around Dean’s neck, throwing all his reservations out the window. He didn’t want to feel stupid or silly. He just wanted to feel right. Right with Dean. “I want that.”

Dean made a shattered noise in the back of his throat. He closed his eyes, licked his lips. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Sammy,” he said.

Sam nosed Dean’s cheek. “I’m not some kid,” he said. He pressed his forehead against Dean’s. “I know what I want.”

“What do you want?” Dean whispered.

Sam met Dean’s eyes. He didn’t shy away. Something magnetizing kept them linked. “I want you to touch me,” he managed, face heating up.

Dean’s eyes went darker. His hands came up to Sam’s sides, rubbing slowly through his shirt. Even that small touch was enough to get Sam’s body buzzing. Dean’s touches had always been an aphrodisiac, a nectar. Sam leaned into the touch, breathed in the scent of Dean’s skin.

He kissed Dean again. Dean kissed him back. He felt Dean’s tongue run along his bottom lip and he opened his mouth wider, letting Dean in. The kiss deepened. Sam reached behind himself and circled his fingers around Dean’s wrist, put Dean’s hand under his shirt.

Dean growled into the kiss, and did what Sam wanted. He got his hands up under Sam’s shirt, exploring his hips, his tummy, then coming up his back and shoulders. 

Sam did the same to Dean, touching his bare skin, tracing lines across his abs and running experimental touches up and down his muscled arms. Dean was panting a little, shifting, and Sam broke off the kiss unexpectedly, their lips popping as they separated.

“Do it,” Sam said.

“Do what?”

“What you’re holding back from doing,” Sam said, his tone slightly petulant, mostly challenging.

Dean smirked at him then, and before Sam knew what was happening, Dean had dragged Sam down onto the bed until he was laying on his back. Dean straddled him, pinning Sam’s arms above his head. 

Dean leaned down, plastering his body against Sam’s until Sam could feel Dean’s hard cock pressing against his thigh through their jeans.

Sam moaned. He couldn’t help it.

“Fuck,” Dean swore. “Fuck, Sammy.”

Dean grinded down against Sam, and Sam’s hips stuttered, moving of their own accord to meet Dean’s motions. It was barely any friction, jeans too constricting, but it was a first, it was exciting, Sam couldn’t believe it was happening.

He closed his eyes and bared his throat, giving himself to the sensations. He felt Dean bite a bruise into his throat and shuddered. Dean nosed along his neck, hands rubbing against Sam’s nipples.

The next time Dean bit down, Sam came. He came with a bitten-off whine, in his pants, with just the limited friction, like a teenager. 

Sam reached down, pressed a hand against Dean. Moved his hand up and down, increasing pressure and drag as he went. It didn’t take long before Dean was biting off his own groans, coming into his pants, too.

“You’re welcome,” Sam said when they’d both come back down to Earth.

Dean didn’t respond right away, still panting. He lay there for a moment, a weighted, warm blanket on top of Sam, and then pushed up onto his knees and off the bed in one fluid moment. Sam sat up, watching him go, still wary about all of this, still afraid of what Dean might do.

Dean went into the bathroom but he didn’t shut the door. That was a good sign. Sam heard water running and then Dean came back over with a wet washcloth. He sat on the edge of the bed and shucked off his pants and boxers and started cleaning his spent cock right then and there. Sam just watched quietly. 

When Dean was done, he turned to Sam, holding the now slightly soiled washcloth. He held it out.

Sam took it from him. He felt as though he were participating in some strange and arcane ritual. With Dean watching, he wriggled out of his own pants and boxers, cock lying against his thigh, pubes frazzled and come-stained.

Using the washcloth, he cleaned himself, mixing his and Dean’s come. When he was done, he tossed the washcloth into the corner of the room, where their pile of dirty laundry was growing.

Before Dean could say another word or defuse anything about the situation, Sam unbuttoned his shirt and shed his overshirt and shirt. He sat in bed naked, watching Dean expectantly.

Dean just stared at him for a moment, face unreadable--slightly conflicted was all Sam could glean from it--but definitely roving, cataloguing the various parts of Sam’s body.

Dean got with the program, tossing off his henley.

He got into bed next to Sam.

Sam watched him. All of him.

The movie credits were scrolling on the TV, and Sam leaned over to snag the remote from the nightstand. He turned off the T.V., the only light coming from the bathroom, bathing the room in a dim, warm light.

He grabbed the comforter, and Dean moved with him, shuffling down and over until they were facing each other on their sides, the sheets pulled up to their waists.

Sam stared at Dean’s wide eyes in the darkness. This close up, he could make out some of Dean’s freckles splayed across the ridge of his nose, the lines beginning to develop at the corners of his eyes and mouth. 

He was so beautiful.

Sam had always known this; it was an objective fact, not a statement of love. Dean was barely fourteen when people of all kinds started propositioning him, and Sam was fairly certain John had done more than break a few fingers over that kind of shit. But Dean was unstoppable--even without his constant gloating and monologues, Sam had known when Dean lost his virginity, had understood it in a basic, childish way.

Sam had watched his own weight fluctuate while Dean only put on longer eyelashes and fuller lips and muscles. Sam had gone from a chubby kid to a lanky, awkward, androgynous thing while Dean absolutely flowered, turning even the straightest of men gay.

Dean’s hair had started out blonde; it had burnished over time, but it had always complemented his green eyes, the strong cut of his jaw.

Anyone could see that.

Sam was aware that he was staring. He was aware that’d been staring for over a minute now. But he finally had permission to do so instead of stealing glances and now he was addicted. He had new eyes with which to look at things he’d known all his life. It only made his feelings--his stupid, stuffed down, crazy feelings, which were somehow requited--that much larger and stronger.

It made Sam wonder how Dean could possibly feel the same way about him.

Sam was not adonis. Sam didn’t have the power to make anyone like him, didn’t catch glances everywhere he went. He didn’t roll with the punches. He wasn’t comfortable in his skin. 

Dean had always teased Sam and gotten annoyed had him for various things. It was practically his sworn duty as an older brother, but Sam had always had a sensitive heart, and over the years, he’d begun to wonder just how much of a burden he really was to Dean.

The facts didn’t line up.

Dean was straight. Dean could get anyone he wanted. Everyone loved him. He was beautiful. Sam was broken and strange and awkward. He was a moppy-haired boy, nothing like the Playboy girls Dean shacked up with on a regular basis.

Sam had never been all that convinced that Dean liked him. Dean loved him, of course, but that day-to-day “like” wasn’t something Sam associated with the way Dean treated him.

“Sweetheart,” Dean said, lowly, roughly. “Stop that.”

Sam blinked. “Stop what?”

Dean shook his head, his lips turned up in the smallest of smiles. “Stop overthinking,” Dean said. “Can’t we have something good? For once?”

But Sam couldn’t drop it at that. He bit his lip, frowning, and he was a second away from spilling it all when Dean reached forward and cupped Sam’s jaw, his finger brushing against a sore spot on Sam’s neck, probably a hickey that Dean had left on his skin.

“C’mere,” Dean murmured. He kissed Sam softly, then shuffled into Sam’s space, wrapping his arms around Sam and pulling him close. Sam went easy with a sigh, closing his eyes and breathing in all the wonderful Dean-scent around him.

He could hear Dean’s heartbeat, stable and sure.

Sam wasn’t ready to sleep yet.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Y’don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Dean said, closer to sleep than Sam was.

“Yes I do,” Sam persisted. “I was the one who pushed you into this, and then I--”

“Sammy,” Dean said, with an edge. “Shut up.”

Sam shut up. When he opened his eyes, Dean was frowning down at him with almost parental concern. “This is real for me,” Dean said. “That’s why it’s so goddamn terrifying.”

The knot in Sam’s chest went a little loose at that. “Real for me too,” he confessed in a small voice.

Dean smiled at him. “Then go the fuck to sleep,” he said. “So I can get out of this conversation.”

Sam snorted. He closed his eyes again, snuggling up closer to Dean and his warmth. Dean’s arms tightened around him. All was quiet for several beats.

“Night, Sammy.”

“Night, Dean.”


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Sam had a gun in his hand and a scream in his throat. He saw blue, icy lightning; he felt chills grip his spine and anchor him to his spot. 

Wet smell. Concrete. Darkness. Someone screaming. Him screaming.

He was so tired. But he had to get up. He had to get up, because he was coming, and if he got Sam, then, then--

“Sammy. Sammy.”

Sam jerked awake with a gasp, going both hot and cold at once.

He scrambled out of the touches trapping him, he couldn’t let the man touch him--

“Hey, jesus.” Wait. Sam recognized that voice. He blinked, staring up into the concerned and mildly freaked out eyes of Dean. 

Sam wasn’t pulling in enough air, gasping like a chain smoker, and his heart was beating a mile a minute. He took in his surroundings--the shitty motel, his naked brother--and he came back to reality.

The events of last night caught up with him. 

The dream was still sticking to him, though, with its persistent feeling of dread, and Sam shuffled back into Dean’s space. Dean put a hand on Sam’s forearm, grounding him. 

“Just a nightmare,” Dean said, once Sam was breathing semi-normally again. “You’re fine.”

Sam nodded, and with each breath, the dream watered away even more, leaving him feeling like a boy crying wolf. He went red, smiling at Dean in apology. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” 

With that, Dean untangled himself from Sam, kicked back the sheets, and rolled out of bed. He moved like he’d been sleeping on all of his limbs at once all night, and Sam snorted a laugh. He smiled at Dean’s lack of grace but his tummy went warm at that bare ass, at the curve of Dean’s back, his strong legs and thick thighs.

Dean wasn’t hiding. If anything, he was probably putting on a little show for Sam. Sam was allowed to look. Dean wanted him to look.

That would seriously never get old. Not even when he and Dean were in their eighties, sitting on a porch, and--

Sam stopped himself. That was. That was a little too much, at least for him, at least for him right now. He didn’t want to think about his and Dean’s future. He just wanted to think about right now.

He hopped out of bed, joining Dean in the bathroom, neither of them clothed. 

In that sense, their morning routine was completely unchanged--Sam had lived his whole life too close to Dean and raised by an ex-Marine. Dicks were a frequent sight. Personal space was non existent.

This time around, though, and the dicks and the lack of personal space meant something different. The smiles that were traded and hip checks were loaded with a new kind of knowledge and a special kind of commitment.

Sam was addicted to it.

***

They sat at the kitchenette table eating breakfast bagels. Outside, the Impala was packed and ready to go. 

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re looking a lot better,” he said.

Sam frowned at Dean, taking a bite of his asiago bagel. 

Dean gestured to Sam’s abdomen. “You feeling better?”

Oh. Sam had completely forgotten life before Dean and the bed. He hadn’t so much as looked at the stitches on his tummy all day.

Like his body had forgotten, in that moment, his stomach twinged slightly, stitches pulling and aching like a stitch would after a few days. He rubbed it through his shirt, feeling a little jittery. 

“Hey.”

He looked back up at Dean. Dean had cream cheese on his nose. “You good?”

Sam forced his hand to rest on his thigh. He bobbed his head. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Dean nodded back, but he didn’t look too convinced. He kicked Sam under the table. “Where to next?”

Sam mimed wiping his nose, and Dean rolled his eyes and wiped the cream cheese off with a napkin. Sam stretched his toes, thinking. “Something easy,” he said. “So we can get back on track.”

Dean nodded. “East Coast, then? Old timey spirits?”

Sam nodded back. “Sounds good,” he said. “Leave in half an hour?”

Dean nodded--maybe he’d never stopped, they were like bobbleheads--lips pursed. “Sounds good.”

Dean knew why Sam delayed by thirty minutes.

It only took them twenty five to make out like horny teenagers, rut against each other with their jeans around their thighs, and quickly clean up in the bathroom.

Sam’s heart was still jittery with excitement when he slid into the passenger seat a few minutes later. Dean was in the drivers’ seat, whistling a Led Zeppelin song and looking infuriatingly smug.

Sam couldn’t feel pissed, though, when he was finally the one who’d put that shit eating grin on Dean’s face. 

It was so new and so… scandalous. Being alone, with Dean, in a vacuum where no one else existed, was all comfort and touch and grounding. Dean was his. He always had been. There was nothing wrong with that. Their bodies touching in new ways was more like homecoming than anything else.

But eventually they had to return to the real world, and in the light of day, Sam’s stomach flipped a little when he looked at the scratch on his wrist where Dean had bit him. If anyone found out, it would be the end of them. Even strangers in small towns stared at them for too long, seeing two boys who practically morphed into one while walking.

But someone like Bobby, or Ellen, or Jo… they couldn’t know. It was bad enough as it was, and throwing incest into the mix didn’t help things.

This is what Sam thought about as Dean drove east, winding around mountains and then back down onto flatter land, the Atlantic Ocean ahead of them. 

Dean was cheery, jiggling his knee to the music and driving one-handed, loose and relaxed, frequently smiling over at Sam or leaving a hand on his knee or something. 

Sam couldn’t help feeling a little weighted down by everything. He was scared of how the days had passed recently, and didn’t like what the blood loss and head injury had done to him. He was still doubting himself, and Dean, and everything, and worrying about other people to boot.

Despite all that, he was happy.

He was genuinely happy for the first time in what felt like ever.

He lowered the window, letting the wind fuck his hair up as Dean glided toward the upper East coast. Dean cranked the radio loud, singing along with “Come On Eileen.” He winked in all the right places, making Sam laugh, and hey, you know, he wasn’t actually that bad of a singer.

Sam remembered Dean’s lullabies from his childhood. Dean was capable of singing like a bird, all softness and sweetness. 

He wanted that.

He stared through every town they passed. He was having revelations one after another, like hitting every pin with the bowling ball. 

He wanted Dean’s sweetness. He wanted this caring Dean, who read him so clearly and did his best to calm him. He wanted Dean’s sure touch and wicked grin. He wanted Dean all to himself.

It was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. The thought of it gave him hope, but the reality of their lives meant it was impossible. 

They die bloody, that’s what Dean had said. That’s what was ahead of them.

Except maybe not, a stupid part of Sam’s brain piped up.

He was thinking himself in circles. Thinking about it any longer wouldn’t give him a sudden epiphany or alleviate his anxiety. He had these bad feelings and they would most likely sit with him for a good long while, even if he shared them with Dean.

A hand hit him in the chest, not aggressive but enough to startle a breath out of him. He looked over at Dean, who had an eyebrow raised and those damn perfect lips slightly open.

“Hey,” Dean said. “You good to stop for lunch?”

“What?” Sam blinked, and turned in his seat, squinting out the passenger window. Wherever they were felt like somewhere a layer before the coastal states, like Pennsylvania. “Yeah, sure.”

They stopped in a diner that looked exactly like the last diner they’d been in, and they both ordered the same thing. Sam stared out the window, idly watching families pass by, spouses pressed up against each other and sharing secret laughs. He wondered what kinds of lives they led, where they lived.

Dean kicked him in the ankle. “You’re real phazy today,” Dean said, but he sounded more teasing than actually concerned. “You find one yet?”

Sam looked down at the newspaper in his lap. He had a highlighter and a pen and everything, but he hadn’t found a single thing so far that sounded like a case, though the closer they got to New England, the more hits they’d get. Shit was more haunted than an abandoned asylum.

“Not really,” he said. “But soon enough, we’ll--”

Sam stopped himself. Something caught his eye. Out the window, over Dean’s shoulder, he’d seen a dark shape, formless, for a split second. But there was nothing there.

Dean turned in his seat to look where Sam had froze. After seeing nothing, he turned back to Sam with a questioning look.

Sam felt his cheeks head up a little. “Thought I saw something,” Sam said. “Was probably nothing.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Sure,” he said. He kicked Sam’s ankle again. “You gonna eat that?” he asked, jerking his chin at the remaining fries on Sam’s plate. 

Sam rolled his eyes. He pushed the plastic tray over to Dean. “All yours,” he said, dry.

Dean rubbed his hands together like a gleeful child and dug in, shoving handfuls of fries in his mouth at once.

“God, I can’t believe I kissed that,” Sam said without thinking, staring at Dean’s grease-lined mouth, his teeth green with bits of lettuce and onion.

He froze, and Dean froze, and they stared at each other, frozen, for several beats.

Eventually, Dean leaned back, still chewing--louder, if anything--and gave Sam a cheeky grin and a wink. “You did, and you seemed to like it a lot, sugar,” Dean said, giving Sam a look up and down like he was some big-titted waitress in North Dakota.

Sam flushed, but lower down this time. He shifted in his seat.

The waitress approached, and he sat up straighter. She grinned at them, specifically Dean, and leaned forward, giving Dean a lot to look at. “Find everything okay?” she asked, somehow making the innocuous sentence breathy.

“We’re good,” and Sam was surprised at how normal Dean’s tone was. He looked and found Dean wasn’t looking at her chest, he was looking at her eyes. Dean smiled politely. “Thanks.”

Disappointed, the waitress stood up and nodded at them before walking away.

Sam stared at Dean. It took Dean a moment to notice. Once he did, he prickled up like a hedgehog. “What?”

Sam shrugged. “Nothing.”

Dean scoffed, puffing out his chest like some sort of insecure dodo doing a mating dance. “Whatever. Weirdo.”

“You’re the weirdo,” Sam fired back.

Dean shot him a cross-eyed, mocking look with his tongue out while he dug out his wallet to pay.

They bickered all the way to the car, and Sam never thought about the figure he’d seen once.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

They were in Massachusetts when Sam found a case. A haunted lighthouse, of all things, just a few towns over. It wasn’t a big place--mostly a tourist town, booming in the summer--and Sam was honestly looking forward to it.

Sure, it was a job, but it sounded like a dream. Based on the scant article Sam had read, he already had theories about who did it. How often did that happen? And how often were their hunts practically vacations?

They were only about half an hour away when Sam booked a room with one king at an absolute steal of a nightly rate in a local bed and breakfast. It sounded cute and domestic, which made Dean wrinkle his nose, but Sam could tell it was only for show.

He hoped, when the job was done, that they’d be able to stay for a day or two, and truly enjoy the room and go down to the beach. He wondered if there were any good seafood joints or candy shops. He might force Dean to go window shopping, just for the novelty of it.

He was getting a bit ahead of himself, though. They still had a case to work. While Dean filled up Baby with gas, Sam dipped into a nearby library to do some quick research. He checked out a book on local family trees and another on folklore and spirits in New England. 

They got to the bed and breakfast around sunset. It was a cluttered victorian, painted in about seven shades of pastel pink and purple with a billion parapets. The owner greeted them graciously, not-so-subtly adjusting the rainbow pride pin on her cardigan, making Dean snort, but Sam appreciated it.

They settled into their room easily enough, a first floor room with a balcony (was it called a balcony when it was on the first floor?) that looked out over the Atlantic ocean. The quilts on the beds looked handmade.

There was a little table and chairs by the balcony sliding doors, and Sam immediately set up shop there, digging deeper into his research, hacking into police records, all that good stuff. 

The sunset over the ocean was beautiful. Long, cottony clouds stretched across the horizon, burnished pinks and golds, and the muffled crashing of waves made Sam’s heart rate go way down.

Dean was humming some song, bumbling about the room, getting all of their things put in their proper places. He was kind of anal like that. Through the wall, a cat meowed.

Sam was doing history on the lighthouse that was haunted, and the stories that recent victims of the “ghost attacks” had published in the paper. Based on the use of old-timey fishing nets and excessive strangulation, Sam was ninety-nine percent sure the ghost was a teenage girl who had been killed almost a century ago when her abusive father purposefully pushed her off the back of their fishing vessel.

The only tricky bit was her bones. If she was haunting the lighthouse, Sam still had hope that maybe a locket of her’s or some other physical thing was tying her to its location, rather than her seaweed-addled corpse haunting the ocean a few miles out from the lighthouse. That would be a bitch.

The lighthouse had been turned into a museum, but it had been temporarily closed after the third person went to the hospital after being choked by an invisible force.

It gave Sam and Dean the perfect window to sneak inside, find the object, burn it, and solve the case. It might be over before the sun rose tomorrow.

That was a win if Sam had ever heard one. He leaned back in the chair with a satisfied grin just as Dean finished plugging in electric toothbrushes in the bathroom. 

Dean came and sat across from him. “Wow,” he said. “Eat any canaries lately, kitty?”

Sam snorted. “Dude, check this out,” he said. He gave Dean the whole spiel, which, with this case, didn’t take very long.

When Sam was done, Dean leaned back in his chair, too. He gave Sam an appraising look. “Well, damn,” he said, folding his hands in his lap. “Good work, Sammy.”

Sam glowed under the praise. “So, we heading out tonight?”

“Yeah. In about three hours?”

“Sounds good.” Sam bit his lip. “Do I get a reward?”

Dean gave Sam a look like Sam had just become a Picasso. “What?”

Sam’s ears were burning. “You know…” he trailed off, feeling like an idiot but in too deep, “for being so good?” His voice cracked.

Instead of teasing him, Dean’s eyes darkened, and he grinned. He stood up, sauntering around to stand behind Sam’s chair. Sam couldn’t see him and his pulse quickened.

Dean leaned down. “Oh yeah?” he whispered, his breath tickling the hairs curling behind Sam’s ear, “what do you think would make a good reward?”

Sam shivered. He was chubbing up in his pants, and fast. He swallowed. “Can you--can you touch me?”

Dean was silent for several beats. Sam didn’t dare look behind him. 

Finally, after what felt like ages, Dean’s hands came down on Sam’s shoulders, squeezing and massaging him there. Sam was so achey, so beaten down. He felt it all at once, and Dean’s massage was like a salve being applied right to his soul. His eyes fluttered shut, and his body loosened and relaxed under Dean’s confident touch.

Dean’s hands drifted lower, brushing across Sam’s pecs and glancing off his nipples. His fingers fumbled for a bit but found the buttons on Sam’s shirt. It didn’t take him long to unbutton Sam’s shirt. Dean reached into Sam’s undershirt, rubbing calloused fingertips over Sam’s sensitive nipples.

Sam shivered again, toes curling in his socks. 

“You like that?” Dean asked.

Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he said, voice broken, wasn’t he fucking easy, “yeah.”

Dean pressed a hand lower, brushing across Sam’s ticklish tummy. His hand disappeared.

A moment later, and Sam was being helped out of his shirt. He shrugged it off his shoulders.

Dean’s hands unbuttoned his jeans, and Sam, in his eagerness, wriggled them down past his ass. Dean pulled Sam’s hard cock out of his boxers, a string of precome already leaking from the tip.

Sam groaned the moment Dean’s sure fist pumped Sam’s cock. Dean’s slow, steady movements and his warm breaths against Sam’s jaw were too much for Sam. He came quickly, spurting come all over his chest. 

He heard skin on skin and sank to his knees as fast as he could. Dean was standing with his cock in his hand, fist pumping, and his mouth dropped when he saw Sam beneath him.

“Please,” Sam begged, mouth watering, “let me.”

Sam watched Dean’s brain short circuiting in live time. Dean was staring at him, holding his twitching cock, so Sam took initiative. He shuffled forward, knees burning against the shitty carpet, and put a hand around Dean’s hot length, prying Dean’s fingers off.

Dean’s hands went to Sam’s scalp, rubbing and massaging there, running fingers through his hair, and Sam closed his eyes. God. That felt good. He leaned forward, and rubbed Dean’s cock against his cheeks, like an overly affectionate cat.

Dean swore, biting his lip, his fingers tightening in Sam’s hair. Sam rubbed against Dean’s cock some more, before popping the head into his mouth.

Dean was wide, and Sam’s lips stretched to accommodate him, but he could take him. Sam sucked on the head like a lollipop, and Dean jerked forward. Sam almost gagged, not expecting that much more of Dean’s cock, but he was able to relax his throat and roll with it.

Dean pulled back, muttering apologies and petting Sam, but Sam just scooted forward again and swallowed Dean’s cock.

Sam tuned out the world, focusing on the heavy weight of Dean’s cock in his mouth, the salty taste, the way it moved when he did something right. He breathed out his nose.

He liked having Dean’s cock in his mouth. He liked being so familiar with it in this way. He liked knowing Dean like this. 

He liked that it was wrong.

His toes curled underneath him as he bobbed faster. He massaged Dean’s balls, feeling them draw up and tighten. He paid special attention to the sensitive spots around the head that left Dean gasping for breath, and soon enough, hot, salty come was pulsing into his mouth.

Some of it dripped down his chin, but Sam swallowed most of it, milking Dean through his orgasm, refusing to let off until Dean hissed in pain and pawed at Sam’s forehead, oversensitive.

Sam popped off, then, gasping, and wiped come and drool off on the back of his hand. He made eye contact with Dean and licked it off.

He memorized the taste.

Dean chucked, sounding just as ragged as if he’d been the one on his knees. “Jesus,” he wheezed. “Jesus, Sammy.”

Sam smiled, with teeth.


	5. Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

They didn’t do much after that. Dean was pretty much broken for about half an hour, so Sam went and got them dinner at a subs place. He knew Dean loved meatball subs, and he got himself a veggie one. His tummy rumbled as he headed out of the shop, greasy bag in hand, and into the strip mall parking lot. He hadn’t realized how hungry he had gotten.

He’d been a little distracted.

He was standing at the driver’s side door of the Impala when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His body went into hunter mode, and he spun around, a hand on the blade tucked into the back of his jeans.

The parking lot was empty.

Sam still felt the sensation, and he whipped around again. This time, something moved in his periphery. He tried to catch it, spinning once more, but he only succeeded in making himself dizzy. His head felt ten times larger than his feet.

He froze, panting, waiting.

It took a few minutes, but the feeling subsided, and the only eventful thing that happened was a minivan going too fast over a pothole.

Sam sighed, frowning, and got into the car with the slightly cooler subs. He kept a keen eye on the rearview mirror all the way home, but he never saw anything strange.

***

He was antsy to start the hunt.

There were too many things he didn’t want to think about right now. As minor as it had been, the moment in the parking lot had unnerved Sam. The hunt was sensical, simple, logical. It was the story of their lives, and Sam was eager to get back to it.

He whistled along with the radio as they drove down a gravelly coastal road toward the lighthouse. It wasn’t lit up, but it still stood out as an obelisk of darkness against the stars. 

They parked the Impala next to a dilapidated shed with peeling siding and grey shingles. When Sam stepped out of the car, the first thing that greeted him was the sound of waves lapping against boulders. The air was salty here, the breeze heavy. He took a deep breath of it, willing it to loosen his bones.

Boots crunched on gravel and Dean came around the car to stand next to him. He filled a shotgun with salt rounds and waggled his eyebrows at Sam in a goofy grin. “Ready to kick some ass?” he asked.

Sam smiled back. Usually he’d tease Dean for being so amped up, but tonight, he could feel it. “Hell yeah,” he said, and Dean’s grin grew as big as the stars.

They headed in.

The lighthouse smelled like a grandma’s attic but a thousand times more potent. It was a nose-twitching stew of mothballs, wet rope, and a sort of moldy salt smell. 

The light switch did nothing, so it was flashlights. 

They moved in perfect sync, like a rehearsed dance, stepping forward with the same leg and splitting up without a single nod. They just knew.

The room Sam entered was a cramped little kitchen with particle board counters and old shelves for cabinets. He swept his flashlight back and forth like a mini lighthouse beam, but the only thing he illuminated were the tiny, reflective eyes of mice scampering around.

“Dude!” Dean called from across the lighthouse, voice echoing and rising. “Get over here.”

Sam slipped out of the kitchen and hurried over to Dean. He stopped short. “Oh, wow.”

Dean had found the museum.

Sam couldn’t decide if he thought it was cool or creepy.

There were the normal museum things, like barnacle-encrusted giant anchors, big wellies, and paintings of whales. 

But there were also wax figures of sailors and little girls, and their eyes and empty smiles seemed to track Sam wherever he went.

“This is where all the people got attacked?” Dean asked in a hushed voice.

Sam forced his eyes away from the little girl’s face. Maybe her hair was real. No matter what, they’d probably end up burning her. Sam wasn’t looking forward to it. They’d burned wax objects before, and the way they collapsed in on themselves unnerved him.

“Yeah,” Sam replied. “So we should probably burn--”

He stopped short, breath catching in his throat.

There was a girl.

A real one--a ghost one.

Standing right in front of him, in a ripped and torn dress.

But she didn’t look like the wax girl, who had brown, straight hair. She had black, frizzy hair. And her dress was sort of modern, was that a brand logo? Sneakers, too.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even swallow the dryness suddenly covering his mouth, a putrid taste behind his gums.

She took a step toward him. 

Sam couldn’t move. He was rooted in place, like he’d been turned to wax and bolted to a pedestal. He couldn’t hear Dean, couldn’t tell if he was still there.

The little girl opened her mouth. She blinked, one eyelid a half second slower than the other. “Hhh…” she hissed, like a broken faucet. “Hhh...help me.”

All at once Sam could breathe again, his lungs unlocked, his joints unlocked. He stumbled backward. There was a body right in front of him, hands on his shoulders, and he let out a shaky gasp, but it was Dean, not the girl. Dean was shaking him by the shoulders.

“Sammy,” Dean said, eyes wide, frowning, flashlight dropped on the floor, lighting up dust motes in the corner. “Sammy, you scared the shit out of me.”

Sam blinked, staring behind Dean to see if the girl was still there. She wasn’t.

“S-sorry,” Sam stuttered. He looked back at Dean, deflated. “I--I thought I saw something.”

Dean stepped back after giving Sam’s shoulder a final squeeze. “Uh huh,” he said, face an open book of skepticism. “You were, like, frozen, for over a minute, dude.”

“I think she was a ghost,” Sam said, “but not of the dead girl. Someone else.”

“We’ve got a multi-haunting situation?” Dean said. He knelt, picking up his flashlight. It accentuated the shadows of his grumpy frown when he stood back up. “Damn it. I hate when shit gets complicated.”

“It could’ve been nothing,” Sam said, feeling dumb. “Let’s just burn the doll and get out of here.”

Dean nodded. He took a match out of his pocket. “I am so ready to burn shit,” he said, and was thrown against the wall by an unseen force, falling against a bunch of rusty fish hooks.

“Dean!” Sam cried out. He spun on his heel, and saw a spectral version of the wax girl standing in front of the wax statue, face contorted in a supernatural frown of rage. She held her hand out, but Sam was faster--before she could blast him off to space, he’d shot her with the salt gun, and she disappeared.

Dean limped over to him. 

“You okay?” Sam asked.

Dean was holding his back. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Burn the bitch.”

Dean struck the match. He held the burning match out to Sam, and Sam threw it onto the wax figure, feeling a nauseating and oily feeling churning in his stomach.

The match caught the hair first, which struck up in a smelly haze of orange flames, and the rest of the wax and polyester clothes were soon to follow. They had to wait around, Sam getting lightheaded from the fumes, so they could put the fire out just in case it leapt off the marble pedestal and onto the wood floors.

It didn’t. They tamped out the fire. There was a multicolored wax puddle on the ground with glass eyes in the middle, looking right at Sam. The girl didn’t return.

“Does that feel a little too easy to you?” Dean asked. “Did you see the other girl again?”

Sam shook his head. “No,” he said. “But--”

He stopped, looking out toward the main area of the lighthouse. His ears perked up. There it was again. A deep, muted thump, heavy enough to reverberate from whatever high place it came from. “Did you hear that?”

Thump. Thump.

Dean was unphased. “Hear what?”

Sam wanted to laugh. The sound repeated several times while he waited for Dean to hear it. “That thumping noise.”

Dean paused to listen. “I don’t hear anything.”

Sam frowned, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up again. 

“Are you okay?” Dean said. “I think you’re seeing things.”

Sam didn’t want to talk to Dean anymore. He took off running, heading toward the sound. He heard Dean calling for him and running after him.

The sound was coming from the top of the lighthouse. Sam took the winding stairs all the way to the top two at a time. They spiralled around and around, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. Finally, he stumbled onto the final landing, where a thick, iron door separated the outside platform around the giant bulb of the lighthouse from the inside.

Sam reached for the gritty handle and it turned under his hand.

He stepped outside and locked the door behind him.

The wind up here was brutal. Sam could practically feel salt whipping against his cheeks. 

Thunk. Thunk. The sound was loud and pronounced up here.

“Sammy!” Dean called from a distant place. His voice sounded fuzzy. “Sam!”

Sam searched for the sound of the noise. It was coming from the bulb casing. 

Sam watched as the bulb rattled in place. After one final thump, Sam felt weightless. He watched, frozen again, as the light turned on.

It was bright. Blindingly bright, turning his entire field of vision white. His eyes hurt--his very skull hurt. He tried to close his eyes against the onslaught, but it didn’t help. His existence was light and pain. 

The weightlessness disappeared, and he became heavy. A stone, an anchor, no, a sinking ship.

Sam fell.

He hit the ground hard, and the cold cement under his legs--no, metal, right? Metal grating?--was hard and unforgiving.

His body was a collage of aches and pains. 

“Jesus Christ, Sammy,” Dean said. His hands came up to frame Sam’s face. “Sam? Can you hear me?”

Sam frowned. That was wrong. Dean wasn’t here. Sam still smelled salt, but it was his tear-encrusted eyes, not ocean waves. There was no breeze. 

He could hardly move. His shoulders felt like they’d been ripped from his body. He looked around, vision teary and blurry. He was not on top of a lighthouse. He was in a dark, broken space.

Across from him, hung the girl, wrists tied above her head and anchored to the ceiling.

The other girl, not the sailor’s daughter. She was pale and dark-eyed and unmoving.

Sam felt bile rise in his throat.

“Where--” he tried. His throat was destroyed. “What happened?”

“Oh, thank god,” Dean laughed, wet. “You got hit by a djinn, dude. I’ve been looking for you for two days.”

Sam swallowed back the puke. His head was light and his feet were heavy. He stared down at his own wrists, raw and red, puss-covered and shiny, tingling and numb at the same time.

“Can you stand?” Dean asked.

Sam swallowed past the mulchy taste in his mouth. His throat burned, and he distantly clocked the IV on the ground that Dean had pulled from his neck. The girl’s was still in.

“She okay?” Sam rasped.

Dean frowned for a moment, but turned and looked where Sam’s gaze was locked. His features softened. “No,” he said.

Sam nodded. He’d figured. “Need help,” he said.

Dean moved forward, getting his arms under Sam’s armpits. He hauled Sam upright, and Sam groaned, long and loud. He didn’t mean to, but it was really sinking in that he’d been strung up for days, unmoving, with no food. His body was betraying him. He wanted to puke.

“Ooookay,” Dean grunted, shifting his grip to accommodate for how useless Sam was. “Let’s get you out of here.”

They hobbled their way slowly out of the warehouse, half blind, working by moonlight, Sam’s sneakers dragging against the floor. Sam stared at the ground, not bothering to hold his head up as Dean navigated mildewy boxes and cement columns.

Dean froze. Sam jerked his head up. A man ran past, faster than humanly possible, a man with tattoos and blue eyes.

The djinn.

“Shit,” Dean swore. He knelt, dumping Sam against a concrete pole. Sam listed, and Dean pushed him upright, a wound on Sam’s side burning as he did.

“Stay here,” Dean muttered, like Sam was going to do anything else.

Dean left.

Sam was alone and useless. An easy target. The djinn just had to pick him up and string him up again and he’d be toast. Sam’s tired ears strained, his heart picking up, and in every dark shadow, he saw blue eyes, saw a hand reaching out to grab him.

A bullet fired. Somewhere off to his left. Far away enough that he didn’t see it.

Then another.

Sam swallowed, openly panting now. “Dean?” he said, and that was nowhere near loud enough. “Dean?” he tried again, calling out.

No one responded.

Sam listened as hard as he could for a voice, footsteps, the sound of a scuffle, anything. But it was silent.

He did puke, half on the ground, half on his pants, the dull deja vu and horror combining in an overheated collage of sickness.

For a second, all he wanted to do was give up. He was a walking corpse. It had--it had all been fake. He’d been leeched of blood and energy for days. It would take him at least a month to recover. All while the world was going to shit around him. What was the point?

He heard something shift. Somewhere to the left, where the gun had fired. Something dragged along the floor, like cloth, like Dean’s shirt. Fuck. Sam tried to sit up straighter. Maybe he should stand. Could he help Dean?

Sam’s body throbbed, refusing even simple commands. Before Sam could make another attempt, a figure limped into view. Sam held his breath, then let it all out in a relieved laugh when Dean’s familiar bowlegs loped into sight.

Dean was injured, but not too badly. He looked okay. Bloodied and annoyed. He stooped down and got his arms around Sam and hauled him up.

Slowly and surely, all silent except for Sam’s ragged breaths, they got the fuck out of that hell hole.

***

Sam was listing in the parking lot. 

He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. 

Dean murmured some swear, adjusting his grip on Sam, an arm around his waist.

Sam faded in and out. He heard the creak of the car door, and then he was placed in the backseat.

After a few beats spent between waking and sleeping, the car moved. Sam watched sodium streetlights slide across the ceiling of the Impala.

He closed his eyes. 

He gave in.

He let go.


	6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

Wet and cold. Pressure. Gone. Pressure. Gone. Wet and cold. Repeat.

It burned. 

It was a familiar burn.

Sam opened his eyes.

Mildewy, stained popcorn ceiling. 

His neck was made of stone and his tendons screamed when he moved it an inch, but he managed to move his head enough to squint blearily at Dean, who was cleaning the wounds on his wrists.

Sam watched, detached. His wrists were fucked. If anything, he’d need skin grafts. He must have fought hard against his bindings.

Dean was absorbed in his work, tongue sticking out between his teeth, and didn’t notice that Sam was awake.

He dipped his pink washcloth in the bucket of water. He pressed it against Sam’s wrist again. He looked up.

He jolted in his chair when his eyes met Sam’s. “Jesus christ!” He set the cloth down, scooted the chair closer to the bed, felt Sam’s forehead. “How long have you been awake?”

Sam swallowed and it felt like rocks tumbling down his throat. He grunted some vague noise. “N--” he coughed. “Not long.”

Dean pulled his hand back. “You sound like a cheese grater.”

Neither of them smiled. Dean waited a beat. “How you feelin’?”

Sam would have shrugged if it wouldn’t have caused a waterfall of physical agony to cascade through him. “Okay,” he said, and Dean nodded. 

“Where do you hurt?”

Sam laughed a little, but stopped, because it hurt. “Everywhere.”

“I’ve only been working on this,” Dean said, gently cradling Sam’s gross wrist. “It’s been taking a while.”

“Hospital?” Sam asked, but only out of necessity, not desire.

“Maybe,” Dean sighed, answering in the same fashion. “Just lemme try, okay? Then I’ll get a look at the rest of you.”

“Okay.”

Dean kept eye contact for another second, then went back to the wash cloth. He worked at the skin, gently removing threads of rope and infected areas. It hurt like a bitch but was oddly therapeutic. Sam didn’t hiss or move a muscle. He zeroed in on Dean’s fingers and the burning pain they caused. For a moment in time, it was all he knew.

It was real.

Dean made good progress, proclaiming to Sam that he didn’t think Sam would need a hospital visit. Sam didn’t share Dean’s conviction, but he let Dean apply antibiotics and wrap a thick layer of gauze around both of his wrists.

He stared down at them and smiled without humor. It looked like he’d tried to slit his wrists and failed. Sam was numb enough that it didn’t bother him to think about how close reality really was to that concept.

“Let’s get a look at the rest of you,” Dean grunted. He shifted closer, moving from the chair by the bed to the edge of the mattress, their thighs touching. Sam got a flash of their bare thighs, closer than this, pressed together--

He bit his tongue hard enough to draw a coppery tang of blood. No. Absolutely not. He wouldn’t think of that.

He looked down and found his hands clenched into fist, wrists burning, a small amount of blood welling up through the gauze. Dean was looking at his hands, too. He looked up at Sam.

“You good?”

Sam wanted to laugh at that stupid fucking question. He settled for a tiny nod. “Fine,” he said. “Go ahead.”

Dean didn’t fight that. He helped Sam out of his shirt without a word. Getting it over his arms was a bitch, and by the time they’d wrangled the bastard off of him, Sam was out of breath, lightheaded as he struggled to stay afloat over the waves of pain.

“Woo.” Dean’s nose wrinkled up. “When was the last time you showered, dude?”

Sam wasn’t in the mood for humor. Dean still waited for a response, clearing his throat awkwardly when he didn’t get one. “Let’s get you in the shower,” Dean said. “Think you can stand?”

Sam stood on his own, a little stiff, and Dean stayed close behind him while he got into the tiny motel bathroom and shrugged out of his gross clothes. None of them were worth saving. He kicked them into the corner.

He was more comfortable being naked with Dean than before. They were already comfortable while nude--but Sam wasn’t usually so frank.

It was too late to pretend modesty, though, so Sam just ignored Dean’s raised eyebrow and let Dean start the shower and wait for it to get warm. 

Dean shrugged out of his clothes, too, and Sam was jealous of the loose-limbed way he moved, angry that he couldn’t look, that he had to turn his eyes away from freckles he’d memorized just a few nights ago.

Dean helped him climb in, and Sam closed his eyes, letting the hot spray hit his shoulders. It hurt--everything always hurt--but this hurt was good. He could feel the knots in his shoulders loosening under the water. 

He stayed still, head tilted back, letting the hiss of water and steam lower his blood pressure. Dean worked around him, cleaning sweat and blood and dirt out of wounds all around Sam’s body. He was a collage of abuse, keeping Dean busy.

Sam opened his eyes. He looked down at Dean’s head. A mirror image to a wholly different experience from just last night. His cock didn’t even twitch. There was no use.

The water circling the drain by Dean’s feet was pink. 

“I think that’s everything I can do,” Dean said, standing up. “You probably don’t want me poking around there too long, anyway.” He smirked at his own joke.

Sam didn’t respond. “Do I need any stitches?”

Dean frowned. “A few,” he said. “Can you do your hair?”

“No.” Sam wasn’t even going to try. He looked down at his plastic wrapped wrists.

“Okay.” Dean cleared his throat again. “Hold on a sec.”

Sam did nothing while Dean shampooed and conditioner’d Sam’s hair. It burned where it sluiced over open wounds. Dean did it with military speed, and the shower was off only two minutes later.

Dean stepped out first, ass and upper thighs jiggling, and he wrapped a towel around himself before handing Sam one. Sam dried off and sat on the toilet lid. Dean put boxers on, crouching before Sam with the med kit and catering to all of Sam’s various stitches.

None of them were very large, but the sheer number of them meant Dean was in Sam’s space for a long time. 

Sam didn’t say anything. He didn’t apologize for being weird. He didn’t crack a joke. He didn’t make any attempts to cover up his modesty. He forgot how to move his face.

Dean was stitching a long but shallow gash along Sam’s ribs when his eyes flicked up to Sam’s briefly. “What did you see?” he asked, trying to keep it light, but there was no light way to dance around this subject.

Sam sighed. He wished he could stay numb, but Dean’s innocent question, asked so easily, made the corners of his eyes burn and his throat go stubbornly tight. “Jess,” he lied, monotone.

Dean’s face melted into sympathy, into pity, and Sam wanted to scream. “Course,” Dean said. He went back to the stitches. “Sorry, kiddo.”

Dean finished his work not long after that, and helped Sam into loose pajama pants and a button down shirt so it would be easier on his shoulders and more efficient for wound care. 

Sam hadn’t done anything all day except sit or hang by his wrists in some fashion and he was fucking exhausted. Sitting near Dean and talking with Dean and letting Dean fix him up like nothing was wrong was exhausting. 

Dean watched as Sam crawled into bed and rolled onto his better side of the two. It still fucking hurt but he didn’t move. Dean turned the lights off, keeping the bathroom one on so the room was dim. Dean settled at the kitchenette table, typing something on Sam’s laptop. He stepped out for a moment and had a phone call in a lowered voice. Sam didn’t catch a single word.

He drifted not long after that, and even in his sleep, he didn’t get respite from his various aches and pains, watching a Dean that threw his head back in easy laughter drift farther and farther away until he disappeared.


	7. Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

The morning was not any better.

He was able to sit up on his own, but that was the extent of his abilities. His wrists seemed a bit better, but the gauze was in desperate need of changing. He’d pulled a stitch or two in his sleep. And that wasn’t even mentioning how his shoulders and back felt.

Dean cleaned his wounds, re-stitched, re-dressed. Dean got him breakfast. 

Sam bit into his bagel, chewing mechanically. It tasted like sand. Dean sat across from him eating a reuben or something. The red meat hanging out of the end reminded Sam of his wrists.

When he was done eating, he didn’t know what to do. He just sat there. Dean finished not long after, and he didn’t move, either. 

Dean shifted in his seat, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Sammy,” he started, and Sam looked up, unsure of how Dean’s wide, wet, concerned eyes made him feel, “Bobby knows a physiotherapist in Sioux Falls that owes him a favor. I think we should make a trip out there.”

“Until I’m back in commission,” Sam stated.

Dean nodded, chewing at his cheek. “Yeah,” he said. He started to say something but stopped himself. “Just until you get better. I think it’d be a nice change of pace.”

Sam was in no place to fight that. “Okay,” he said.

Dean blinked. “Okay?”

Sam shrugged. Ow. “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good.”

Dean was quiet again. Still he didn’t move. “What you saw messed you up,” he eventually said, and while it wasn’t a question, it was an opening, maybe an olive branch, something for Sam to hold onto, to respond to.

Sam nodded. It was the least he could give Dean without revealing the truth. He laughed past the lump in his throat. “Understatement,” he said.

Dean’s face creased in sympathy. “You gotta talk to me, man.”

Sam laughed again. “Neither of us want that.”

“It doesn’t matter what we want!” Dean raised his voice. “Look at you, man. You’re a mess.”

“Thanks.”

Dean’s hand closed into a fist. “Sammy,” he hissed. “Come on, kid, give me something.”

“My wrist hurts,” Sam said.

Dean looked like he wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Okay--”

“My other wrist hurts,” Sam continued, unbothered by Dean. “My ribs hurt, my back hurts, my shoulders are killing me, I ache all over, and I’m having trouble adjusting to real life when everything I thought I knew was fake. I was living a dream. For at least six months. I lose track of time. I keep slipping up. I wish I could go back. So, yeah, I’m a mess. Sorry. Just. Sorry.”

Sam’s heart was pounding. He forced himself to calm down. He was sitting ramrod straight, back protesting, and he slouched down.

Dean was staring at him, those eyes that had known him all his life reading something off him. He wasn’t the Dean from before he woke up, but he wasn’t nobody, either. Sam had loved the Dean in his dream because he loved this Dean. 

“It’s okay,” Dean murmured. “You’re okay, Sammy, you’re fine. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity,” Sam sighed. “So cut the crap.”

“It’s not crap, you idiot,” Dean said, and he didn’t sound angry, just morose. “And it’s not pity. I know we don’t really--I’m here for you, okay? If you ever decide you can talk about it. Okay?”

Dean looked so fucking earnest, out on a limb, just for Sam, and Sam couldn’t stay pissed. “Okay,” he said softly, and Dean nodded, relief palpable in his eyes. 

Dean stood, smiling, offering a hand to Sam. Sam took it with a grunt and stood. “Think you could handle a road trip?” Dean asked.

“Guess there’s only one way to find out,” Sam replied.

***

It was not a very fun road trip.

Cramped cars were not the best places for people with fucked up, battered bodies. 

Dean sympathized, though, and they stopped at rest stops in just about every state they passed through. Sam stretched every time they stopped, and around lunch, they got diner fare in Indiana, and Dean changed Sam’s dressings in a Biggerson’s single stall bathroom.

Sam felt like hell, but there was something about the Impala that grounded him. As much as the car was murder on his knees and back, it was home, and seeing Dean in his element kept Sam away from the edge, if only for a moment.

They picked their way across the country. A trip that should have taken them half a day took the full day. 

By the time they pulled up at Bobby’s, it was deep into night. Deep enough that it was technically early morning.

Bobby stood on the porch, leaning against the railing. He yawned. “Hey, boys,” he said, as Sam and Dean climbed out of the car.

Sam hobbled up the porch. He tried to slide past Bobby, but the old bastard wrapped him up in a hug before he could, squeezing a grunt out of him. Bobby pulled back, nodding at Sam. “Djinn dreams are a bitch,” he said. “I’ve known some tough people put out of sorts because of them. You can have whatever you need.”

Sam nodded, forcing a smile. “Thanks, Bobby.”

Bobby nodded. He opened his mouth, but Sam didn’t listen to whatever he hand to say, fleeing into the quiet refuge of the house.

He leaned heavily on the railing as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He knew Bobby and Dean were still out on the porch and were most likely talking about him and how screwed up he was. They could do that all they wanted. Sam was going to pop some pain meds and go the fuck to sleep.

He tried to clean his own wounds. He didn’t fail, but he didn’t exactly succeed, either. His body pulsed in beats of pain and he was getting irritable, swearing at the antibiotics cap when it stuck a little.

Sam curled up in bed and forced his eyes shut. 

He wanted.

He wanted so fucking badly that it hurt. It hurt everywhere, but especially in his heart and his throat and the corners of his eyes.

He could see it all so clearly. It had been so real.

Dean’s hand ran down his cheek and he leaned into it. He wanted those green eyes, drowning in empathy, feeling the same guilt and fear and love and want as he did--

The hand went to his hair and Sam jerked back, sitting upright. It wasn’t a fantasy hand.

Dean sat on the edge of his bed. Hand frozen in mid air. “Sorry,” he said. “Sammy--”

“Just don’t,” Sam said. He leaned back onto the mattress with geriatric effort. He curled up facing away from Dean.

Dean didn’t say anything after that. The bed lifted when Dean got up.

“Gonna take a shower,” Dean said, and Sam felt guilt at the roughness and hurt in his tone, “call if you need anything.”

Sam didn’t respond. He heard the door open and shut a moment later.

Once Dean was gone, he let himself ache.

He wasn’t sure he had the energy to cry, but his breathing struggled. He lay there for a long time, just feeling it. 

He heard the shower turn off and tried to school his features, burying his face a little deeper into the pillow. A shudder rolled through him. Two days. He’d been in that dream world for who knows how long, and it had been two days in reality. To Dean, nothing was different, he just had another little brother-shaped mess to clean up.

The bedroom door opened. Sam heard Dean rifle about and drop into the other bed. The room went dark. Sam listened until Dean’s breathing became slow and even in light snorts. 

He rolled onto his other side with a quiet grunt and looked at Dean’s sleeping frame.

He was going to have to pack all this shit away and bury it down deep if he wanted to survive. There was no other way.

He had to get better and move on.

For Dean’s sake.

***

His first physiotherapy appointment was the next morning, which Dean drove him to, radio low.

The doctor, Dr. Gill, was not impressed with him.

She was a tall woman with messy, curly blonde hair, and her examination of Sam ended with a look of pursed-lipped disappointment.

The exercises she put him through were brutal. Sam wouldn’t be surprised if she were secretly a demon. He tried to stop several times, or highlight how fucked his shoulder was, but Dr. Gill didn’t care.

“I thought you were supposed to help me,” Sam panted, hands reaching toward the ceiling, back screaming.

“I am,” Dr. Gill said. “We have to find your limits by pushing you to them. Then we’ll know your strengths and weaknesses, and we can target them.”

Sam huffed. “Can I put my arms down?”

He could have sworn Dr. Gill hid an eye roll as she turned her head. “Yes. Would you like five?”

“Yes, please.”

Dr. Gill stood up from her perch on some sort of plastic therapy bench. “Want some coffee?”

Sam shook his head. She nodded and left. He sagged the moment he was gone. His whole body was one big throb. He’d have to change his wrist dressings when he got home. Most of his stitches looked pretty good, though, and he had to admit that Dr. Gill never made him do anything that would pull a stitch.

He was scrutinizing a deep purple bruise on his hip when Dr. Gill spoke up. “How did you get that?”

He jolted, not expecting her to be back yet, and looked up at her. She held out a coffee cup. Sam took it gratefully, letting his shirt fall down and cover the bruise.

She sat down across from him, drinking her own coffee. She was waiting for an answer.

Sam shrugged. He’d talked with Dean about his cover story. Some of his injuries were too specific to be an accident or clumsiness. “Bad run in with sadism,” he said.

Dr. Gill nodded slowly. She looked like she wanted to say something, but held back.

They finished their coffees in silence. Dr. Gill cleared her throat. “Well, Sam, you did well today.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

Dr. Gill smiled, quite possibly the first time he’d ever seen her look anything other than stern. “Yes. Next time, we’ll focus on those shoulders, get your mobility back.”

“Okay.” It didn’t sound awful. “Thank you.”

Dr. Gill nodded. “Check out at the front desk,” was all she said before turning and leaving.

Sam smiled to himself. She may not be the most tactful person, but Sam was coming around to her.

Dean was waiting outside when Sam exited the building. He got into the car all on his own, like a big boy. Dean drove them home with the radio off.

“So, how was it?” Dean asked. “Was she hot?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It was good,” he said. “And, yes.”

Dean whistled. “Sammy,” he said. “Look at you, getting your Florence Nightingale on.”

Sam shook his head. “At little early for these kinds of jokes, dude.”

Dean shrugged. “Never too early to give you hell,” he said.

“The djinn would agree with you.”

Dean’s smile dropped off his face. 

Aw, shit. Sam shifted. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Dean didn’t look like it was okay. “I shouldn’t have joked.”

Sam frowned. “You were just trying to help.”

Dean turned the radio up. “Sure.”

Sam stared at Dean’s profile, his tight jaw. He had no idea what to say.

He leaned his tender body back, staring out the window and chewing on his lip all the way home.


	8. Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next few days passed by in kind.

Sam went to physical therapy. The pain was unbearable but each day it got easier to go to bed and wake up, and he and Dr. Gill established a tacit kind of rapport.

Meanwhile, Sam was working on his own type of therapy.

His brain was a library, memories stored as books on shelves, dewey decimal.

He wrote up every memory from the djinn dream, put it in a book, and locked it the fuck away. Do not access. Illegal books. Reading them would mean certain doom, Indiana Jones style.

It was not an easy process, or a fun one, and Sam kind of fucking sucked at it. The other Winchesters were suppression kings, but Sam was all bleeding heart.

The worst part was rewiring his brain. Having Dean in his space, seeing Dean’s bare skin, responding to Dean’s smile, his brain had turned them into new, deeper things, and he had to go back and tear down all those walls, bulldoze over the home he’d built in Dean’s crow’s feet.

He had to teach himself to be a normal brother again. To be fucked up as usual, but in private. Secrets hidden and not to be acted on.

In hindsight, he should have known it was a dream. Hell, maybe he did, but it was the one thing he wanted so desperately that he was willing to die to experience it just that one time.

Sometimes he woke up from a dream in the middle of the night and wanted nothing more than to sneak out of the house and track down a djinn and offer himself up to it. A trade. A few months in the dream for his life force. 

Sometimes he’d even sit up, ready to put shoes on and leave. Every time, though, he’d stare over at Dean in the other bed, and his heart would scream like a mother seeing her dead child. He couldn’t leave Dean here alone. He couldn’t kill himself and have Dean wonder if it had been his fault. He couldn’t leave things unfinished, monsters still out there, mysteries unsolved. The demon and his gang.

So, he suffered.

There was no beating around the bush with that. Sam wasn’t happy. He wasn’t certain he’d ever experience happiness again. 

But he had to keep going.

He tried to feel grateful for the things he did have: for Bobby’s deep gazes, suggesting a deeper understanding of Sam’s plight. Sam wanted to ask about that, but he didn’t.

He tried to feel grateful that Dean was making an effort. Dean was worried about him. Dean had reached out. Dean had put their life on pause--which would surely come with consequences--to help Sam.

He was grateful for it, but he also felt like a burden, like a child, like someone infirm. He couldn’t help but feel like he was tiptoeing on broken glass around Bobby and Dean, like they were waiting for the next inevitable injury, the next disability.

It was hard. It was unimaginable. It was pain.

Yet, somehow, every day was just a little bit easier than the last.

He’d been healing for about two weeks, which was nowhere enough time, when Bobby got a phone call from Ash at the Roadhouse.

Sam could tell by the look on Bobby’s face that it wasn’t good. It was never good, of course, but this was something special.

Bobby put the phone down and gave Sam a look of such stifling pity that he had to look away. 

“That was Ash,” he said, as Dean walked into the room. “His little program found another kid.”

Another psychic kid. Another freak like Sam. Who’d probably murdered a few people and caused terror in a small town.

Dean gave Sam a look, a mirror to Bobby’s. 

“Don’t even say it,” Sam said. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Hell, no,” Dean protested. “You’re not better.”

“Does it matter?” Sam laughed. “We can’t just fuck around for another week. That’s how you get more bodies.”

Dean stayed quiet, his mouth pulled in a firm line. Sam didn’t feel satisfied at all that he was right and Dean was wrong. 

“I could send backup, or, hell, other hunters,” Bobby spoke up. “Ash’s network is good. I’m sure he’s got folks who could deal with this.”

Sam was shaking his head before Bobby had even finished speaking. He also didn’t care much for the phrase “deal with,” but now wasn’t the time. “I have to do this,” he said quietly. “I’ll be fine. And if I’m not…” Sam shrugged.

Bobby and Dean were both quiet. 

“Where is it, Bobby?” Dean asked.

“Wisconsin,” Bobby said.

“That’s close,” Dean said, a small amount of hope coloring his voice. “We could leave around noon, get there before dinner, give you enough time to have one last appointment with Dr. Gill.”

Sam was willing to give Dean that compromise, if it would make Dean feel better. Sam always hurt like a bitch right after appointments, but he wouldn’t bring that up right now. 

Sam nodded. “Okay.”

Dean nodded back. “Okay. What about tonight? Bobby made chili how you like it. Want to watch a movie?”

Bobby excused himself to take care of some vague business of his.

Sam melted at the childlike look in Dean’s big eyes. He gave Dean a small smile, all he had the energy for. “Sure.”

It was worth it when Dean lit up like a toddler meeting a puppy for the first time.

***

Bobby’s couch was small, not quite a loveseat, but close. He and Dean were big boys and they were squished together. Dean had a bowl of popcorn he intermittently handed to Sam, and Sam had a warm bowl of chili in his lap.

A big part of Sam was a self saboteur now, or just plain fucking depressed, but he had to admit he wasn’t having a horrible time. The movie was a good distraction, and Sam didn’t get stuck in djinn memories even once.

And the chili was really goddamn good.

Dean had picked Sam’s favorite Godzilla movie, which happened to be Dean’s least favorite Godzilla movie, so this was quite the olive branch from Dean.

“God,” Dean groaned past a mouth stuffed full of popcorn. “Was the screenwriter drunk or stupid?”

Sam snorted. “Probably both.”

“Hollywood,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“Hollywood,” Sam echoed.

The big monster fight had Dean giggling like an idiot, which made Sam snort, which made Dean tease Sam for snorting, which made Sam elbow Dean, which made Dean ruffle Sam’s hair, which made Sam yelp in protest, which devolved into the two of them laughing like giant babies.

It left Sam breathless. Dean looked younger than ever.

The credits rolled. 

“See,” Dean said. “Now, this is nice.”

Sam had no idea how to respond to that. It was, yes, but pointing it out only called to attention how messed up things usually were, and Sam would prefer not to feel extra depressed right now.

“Sam.” Dean said.

“What?”

Dean shrugged. “You wanna add anything?”

“Not really,” Sam said. “I had a good time.”

Dean nodded. He wanted to push--of course he did--but to his credit, he took that at face value. “Good,” he said. “I did, too, Sammy. Maybe we can, uh, find more time for something like that, yeah?”

Sam knew they wouldn’t. He smiled. “Sounds good.”

Dean got up and popped the VHS out of the VCR. He put it back on the shelf and stretched, cracking his back. He lingered for a second, then headed for the hallway.

Sam sat up. “Dean.”

Dean paused. He turned to look at Sam. 

“Uh.” Sam shifted. “Hey… thanks.”

Dean smiled, and it soft and small but genuine. He nodded, tapping the threshold once before ambling away on his stupid bowlegs and heading upstairs.

Sam stayed downstairs a little longer, ostensibly to finish his chili, but he spent most of his time staring out the back door, looking at the dark backyard without seeing it. 

Tomorrow, his life restarted. Tomorrow, normality came back. In close quarters, he’d have to work twice as hard to shove down everything that had happened in the dream.

Sam cleaned his dishes at the sink and headed upstairs to sleep a bed away from Dean, like he would for the rest of his life.

He tried to clear his thoughts so he could sleep. He had an early day tomorrow, and most likely a bitch of one.

Instead, he stared at the ceiling into the little hours of the morning, and only fell asleep just as the sun began to rise.

***

Dr. Gill quirked an eyebrow at Sam when they sat down together. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I know.”

Dr. Gill shrugged. “It’s your funeral,” she said. “Now, where were we on shoulders?”

By the end of the appointment, Sam’s shoulders felt like someone had stabbed them forty times from the inside out, but he’d gotten Dr. Gill to laugh twice, and he’d memorized a lot of the exercises so he could continue on his own from inside dingy motel rooms. 

At the check out desk, Sam felt a surge of guilt for using Bobby’s best fake insurance for this and for leaving Dr. Gill high and dry. He liked her and considered her a sort of friend and he was going to miss her. 

“Dr. Gill,” Sam called before Dr. Gill could disappear into the back. Dr. Gill stopped before the door and turned around with a polite smile.

“I… we might be going back on vacation after this,” Sam said, “so if I don’t see you for a while… thanks.”

Dr. Gill cocked her head, seeing right through him, but she nodded. “That’s very brave of you, and I’m glad you’re getting out of your bubble,” she said. “Keep yourself safe, Sam.”

Sam nodded, throat suddenly thick. “I will.”

Dr. Gill waved at him, and he waved back. He turned and left as quickly as he could. Lingering would only make it worse.

Sam dropped into the Impala just in time to watch Dean fiddle with the radio in an effort to pretend Sam hadn’t startled him.

“Let’s go,” Sam said.

He must have given something away because Dean paused instead of putting the car in drive. “You good?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. Just… gonna miss her,” he said.

He could see the moment Dean decided not to make a stupid joke, and he appreciated it. Dean saluted the doctor’s office. “Thanks for sewing him up, doc,” he said, before shifting the car and pulling away from the curb.

A few minutes later, they were on the interstate, heading toward Wisconsin.


	9. Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

As predicted, Sam’s shoulders and back were giving him hell.

He tried to sit still so Dean wouldn’t worry, but he could only hold a position for so long before it became unbearable. 

He’d slouch, sit up straight, lean against the door, slide down in the seat, angle toward the window, and start the cycle over again.

Dean obviously noticed. It only took about half an hour of this before he spoke up. “Dude,” he said, eying Sam’s Catholic school good posture. “You should lay down in the back.”

“It’ll get better,” Sam said. “It’s just sore.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Uh huh,” he said. “Well, the offer always stands.”

Sam stayed quiet, and Dean dropped it, shaking his head and turning the radio up. Sam knew music was going to be a good friend of his on this trip.

***

Dean stopped three times as often as he usually did. It was less frequently than the trip to Bobby’s, where Dean had been mother henning him, but it was still slowing them down considerably. Dean had talked a big game when he’d said they’d get there before dinner. It was 6:30 and they still hadn’t even crossed the Wisconsin state border, let alone enter Madison.

All they had from Ash was a name, Alan Westing, and a newspaper article from the Wisconsin State Journal about people being weird and higher divorce rates.

They only stopped long enough to let Sam stretch and maybe eat or piss, so Sam didn’t have time to do extra research. As they drove, he looked out the window, digesting the name. Alan. He wondered what Alan had seen, what Alan had been through. He wondered what Dean was thinking about, if Dean was ready to kill Alan. If Dean’s mental block separating Sam from the other psychopathic psychic kids was still up or not.

Sam turned his head to hide a wry smile. After the whole djinn thing, he could understand them more. Hell, maybe that was the point, and the whole djinn thing had been orchestrated.

He’d kill just to feel the things he’d felt in the dream again.

It was dark, Sam knew it, and definitely not a good sign, but it was the truth. It wasn’t something he’d verbalize or, hell, act on, but it didn’t make it any less true.

Dean may not believe Sam was a monster, but Sam had always known he was one.

***

They hit Madison before it got too dark, and stopped at a diner to eat dinner.

The diner booth was more spacious than the Impala, and while Sam was sick of sitting, he let out a happy sigh as his back sank into it. It was cold against his aching muscles and alleviated some of the pain, enough to make him actually have an appetite by the time the food came out.

They stuffed themselves, hardly talking, and went straight to the cheapest motel in town, which was probably victim to dozens of health code violations. Sam brought their own sheets in, just to be safe, and checked for bedbugs. There weren’t any, but he did find a dead cockroach behind the toilet.

Sam powered up his laptop and connected to the internet. The first thing he did was look up Alan’s name. He didn’t get very many hits. A yellowpages entry, and several websites for a small town practice outside Madison where he was a practicing therapist. Huh. That was definitely a dangerous role for someone with undisclosed powers and probable childhood trauma.

He relayed the information to Dean, and they made a plan of attack.

***

They could have gone straight to Alan, but they didn’t. They still didn’t know Alan’s powers, and if they went right to him and he could read their intentions or see the future, he’d just bail. 

Instead, they posed as journalists and interviewed some of the couples that had made statements in the newspaper article. 

The first one was the mother of a teen who had killed herself. She was happy to talk to Sam and share how wonderful her daughter had been in hopes that the information would get published and spread. Sam winced internally, writing down lots of tidbits about how Lindsey loved to play tennis and volunteer at the animal shelter.

Her mother, Cheryl, wiped a tear, smudging her mascara. She sniffed. “Lindsey was bright but very troubled,” she said. “But she was getting help, I thought she was doing better…” she trailed off, looking like she was going to dissolve into tears, but to her credit, she kept her composure.

Sam tapped his pen thoughtfully against his notepad. “Do you mind elaborating?” he asked softly. “You said she was getting help…?”

“Oh, yes,” Cheryl nodded. “I’m very open about therapy and mental health. It’s this generation’s next big crisis. Lindsey went to several therapists before she found one she liked.”

Sam nodded. He couldn’t ask if it was Alan; that was too specific and personal, and besides, he had a theory already. “Is there anything else you could tell us, maybe if she was acting differently before she…?”

Cheryl blinked at the odd question, and Sam wanted to die, but she rolled with it. “Well, she was being very sweet,” she said with a shaky smile. “She gave all of her pins and buttons and things to this younger girl next door. The girl was so excited.”

Sam nodded. He could tell she was exhausted. He stood, and she and Dean followed suit. He reached out to shake her hand, but changed his mind last minute and wrapped her in a brief but firm hug. He pulled back. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Small,” he said. “Lindsey was lucky to have you.”

Cheryl smiled up at him through tears. “Thank you,” she said. “You boys have a lovely day.”

***

Outside, on the sidewalk, as they walked back to the Impala, Dean nudged Sam. “That was nice.”

“What about it?”

Dean shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “You just… you hugged her, man.”

Sam felt something protective flare up in her chest. “She needed it,” he said. “I felt for her.”

“Okay, not judging,” Dean said. “Just interesting is all.”

Sam stayed quiet.

Dean cleared his throat. “So, uh, that whole being charitable thing,” he switched tracks. “You think that has something to do with this?”

“No, suicidal people often give away their belongings before they kill themselves, or seem unusually relieved and relaxed,” Sam said. “That fits. I don’t think it’s supernatural.”

Dean nodded, frowning slightly. “Huh,” he said. “What’s up next, Good Cop?”

Sam unfolded a set of MapQuest directions and squinted at them. “Uh, divorced guy,” he said. “Sounded pretty bitter in the paper.”

“Yikes,” Dean hissed. He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll take point on this dude. I’ll just make some comment about women and he’ll be ranting along.”

Sam wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, good luck with that,” he said, not hiding his disgust.

Dean shrugged. “Job’s a job,” he said, all cheeky. 

Sam couldn’t parse this Dean, who would happily play a bitter divorced man, to the gentle, soft-eyed man who had whispered sweet things as he crooked a finger inside Sam.

Nope. He couldn’t think about that. He tripped near the curb and Dean gave him a weird look.

They got into the car. Sam navigated, and soon enough, they were outside a McMansion in the suburbs.

“The bitch cheated on me,” the man said the moment they were sitting down. “I want the whole world to know it. Ashley Reed is a cheating bitch. I’ll buy a billboard when I make partner.”

Sam’s polite smile was getting harder and harder to keep up.

“Caught her in the act, huh?” Dean asked, making a noise of sympathy.

“No, thank fuck, or I would have killed her,” the guy laughed. Dean and Sam traded a quick look. “We did couples’ counseling. That’s where all her dirty laundry got aired. I owe that guy my life.”

“Shit, I could use something like that,” Dean chuckled, but his voice was a little shaky. “Got a recommendation?”

“Dr. Westing,” the man responded immediately. “Dr. Alan Westing. Go get your shit figured out, man. Can’t trust women these days.”

“You’ve got that right,” Dean said. “Well, I think we’ve got what we needed. You’ve been incredibly helpful. Thanks for your time.”

“No problem.” The guy put his feet up on the coffee table and lit a cigarette. “Close the door on your way out.”

Outside, Sam elbowed Dean. “Real classy, asshole,” he growled.

“Hey! I got the info we needed, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t have to play into that… garbage,” Sam floundered.

“Maybe you’re right,” Dean acknowledged, frowning at the heat on Sam’s face, “but we had to rile him up, man. You saw how easy that was.”

Sam itched at his back. He could feel the way Dean was looking at him and he didn’t like it. “We should just… try kindness,” he said, knowing how weak his defense sounded.

Dean smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Sure thing, Sammy,” he said. “You try killing a ghost with kindness and let me know how it goes.”

Dean walked ahead, sliding into the driver’s seat of Baby, and Sam stared out the window, feeling an unfounded, guilty kind of misery.


	10. Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

They were certain about Alan, and found his practice’s address, and his home address. They came up with a plan to ambush him. They were pretty sure Alan was some kind of people speaker, a person who could get others to do things or admit things. It was going to be a bitch and a half to talk to him without getting into some kind of bullshit, Sam was overly aware, but Sam had been immune to the powers of the last people speaker they met, so their plan hinged on that. 

Sam had stressed to Dean that they were just going to talk to him. Their job was not killing humans. He was certain he could get through to Alan or at least intimidate him and bruise his ego enough to get him to stop fucking with his patients. As a plan C, they even had a tentative plan about how to get Alan’s license to practice revoked. 

Tonight, though, their work was done, so Sam was browsing psychology websites just in case, and Dean was lounging on the bed with a 6 pack.

Dean turned the volume down on whatever Schwarzenegger movie he was watching and turned to Sam. “How’s your shoulder?”

Sam looked away from the page on guilt and manipulation and tested his shoulders. He’d done some exercises this morning and he didn’t think he’d fucked them up. It still hurt, though, but he tried to keep an amicable sturgeon face going for Dean. “Better.”

Dean nodded, but he didn’t turn the volume back up or look back to the screen. “Hey, Sammy…” he started, trailing off.

Sam waited while Dean just chewed on his tongue and looked pensive.

Dean finally rolled his eyes and gave up beating around the bush. “Just making sure you’re okay,” he said.

It was reflex. “I’m fine,” Sam said. 

Dean wasn’t satisfied. “I know the djinn--”

“I don’t want to talk about the djinn,” Sam broke in quickly.

Dean frowned at him. “Look, I know I suck at this, but.” Dean made a vague hand gesture. “You gotta give me something, man.”

Sam’s guilty twinge came back. He wasn’t trying to block Dean out. He was trying to protect him. He couldn’t explain that to Dean, though. 

“I’m coping,” Sam said simply. “Maybe poorly, but I’m doing it. I do my physical therapy exercises. I don’t jump off bridges. I’d count that as a win.”

Dean was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to jump off a bridge?”

It took Sam a beat too long to open his mouth. Dean’s frown deepened and he got up from the bed. Sam shrank back. Dean clocked it.

“What the hell, Sammy,” Dean said, leaning forward and wrapping Sam in a hug.

Sam froze, unprepared for the hug, but put his arms up around Dean. God. The muscles in Dean’s back were just like he remembered. And Dean’s smell. Sam closed his eyes and took a shuddery breath.

“Come on, kid,” Dean grunted, sounding painfully awkward. “Just, uh, let it out, you idiot.”

But Sam couldn’t do that. He tried his best, though, burying his face in Dean’s shoulder and taking a moment to pull himself together. When Dean released him from the hug, there was something soft in his eyes, something so familiar that Sam’s heart lurched. He opened his mouth, ready to give Dean something, maybe part of the truth, but his stomach flipped when he tried to find the words.

Dean was waiting--of course Dean knew what was going on--and took a step back and when Sam finally shut his mouth.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Dean said, retreating back to the bed and turning the volume up.

Once Dean’s eyes were off Sam, Sam felt tiny and flayed raw. 

He wanted to let Dean in. More than anything. All his life, he’d been trying to coerce Dean through that door, and Dean had been the one hanging back. Now Dean was knocking and Sam couldn’t answer the door.

He thought he’d been doing an okay job, but if Dean was still worried enough to reach out the way he did, then maybe Sam wasn’t doing as hot as he suspected.

It didn’t matter, at least right now. They had a case to solve. As much as Sam would love to pick flowers with Dean and write angsty diary entries, his life would never had room for that.

There was only room for blood. Blood and death and unhappy endings. 

Sam was probably going to have to kill Alan Westing.


	11. Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They decided to ambush Alan at his house rather than his practice. Fewer witnesses.

Sam would go to the door. Dean would be hiding in the wings somewhere, waiting for a signal, whether it was a good one or a bad one. The first plan was to talk to him amicably, but they were both ready to use force if necessary.

Sam was nervous. Dean was nervous. The atmosphere of the motel room was stressful. It was always difficult with psychic kids, and it had never ended well so far. Ever since Andy, Sam had been walking a tightrope-thin line between hope and dread. Every little decision mattered.

The house Alan lived in was nice. It was unobtrusive and small, but in a nice neighborhood in a nice part of town, with a recent paint job and colorful landscaping. It looked about as homogenously normal as houses in this area could. 

Sam stared up at the red front door. He took a breath and walked up the steps to the front porch.

Dean was in the bushes by the first step. The porch was raised high enough in older houses like this one that he was completely hidden from view of the door.

Sam rang the doorbell. He waited for a few beats, his heart leaping into his throat when the lock turned.

The door opened, and Sam was face to face with Alan himself. Sam’s mouth went dry. He had no idea what to say to him. Due to Alan’s success with his practice, Sam had forgotten that Alan was his age. His face was young and freckled.

Alan was in a t-shirt and sweatpants, home from work, but his hair was still nice, his face still handsome. He had sharp eyes and gave Sam a smirky smile. Alan opened the door wider.

“So, you’d like to get me to stop fucking with people, ideally without force, but you’ve killed ‘people like us’ before, and can do it again. How melodramatic. Would you like to make your case in my living room, Sam? I’d love to hear the arguments of a wannabe lawyer.”

Sam blinked. Oh shit oh goddamn fuck. “Uh--”

Boots thunked heavily on the stairs, and a moment later, Dean pushed past him, pistol in hand. “Yes, I think he’d like that,” Dean growled, pushing into Alan’s house and disappearing.

Alan stared after him, then regarded Sam with a raised eyebrow. “He’s a protective one, huh?”

Sam felt weak. He knew Alan could hear his thoughts, but he might as well engage and treat him like a human being. “You have no idea.”

Alan snorted. “You’re a fun one, Sam. Come on in.”

Alan went inside. After a beat, Sam followed.

Sam sat on a white plush couch next to Dean while Alan loitered in the doorway, next to a baby grand. Alan walked over to the piano bench and sat down. He cast Sam a sideways glance. “You know, I tried to teach myself how to play by reading the thoughts of a master pianist, but it didn’t work.” Alan pattered randomly on the keys, creating a discordant tune. “I did learn how to read sheet music, though.”

Sam didn’t say anything. 

Alan rolled his eyes and stood, sitting in the chair across from Sam. “Yes, you’re not here for idle chatter, you’d really like for me to stop messing with my therapy clients, you have several misguided ideas about how licenses work, yadda yadda yadda. It’s not a very fun debate when one of us is a mind reader, so I’ll give you two an advantage.”

Alan shifted sideways until he was propped up by one arm of his chair, his legs hanging off the other arm. He stared up at the ceiling and kicked his legs. “Now I am the patient,” he said. “As long as I’m not looking at you, I can’t read your thoughts. Therapize away, or whatever.”

Dean snorted.

“That’s very considerate of you,” Sam said quickly, shooting Dean a glare. “If you didn’t, er, read it off me earlier, I want you to know that we spoke to Cheryl Small and Royce Peters.”

Alan laughed, smiling up at the coffered ceiling. “Ah, Cheryl,” he said. “Did you read her thoughts? What do you know about Cheryl?” 

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “We know she’s the mother of one of your patients who recently killed herself--”

“And what a favor that was,” Alan said. “Imagine being a 16 year old raped by your sociopathic mother every night. Would you want to keep on living? She thanked me for those pills.”

Sam opened his mouth, but he didn’t have a reply prepared. “There are always other options,” he tried. “She could’ve--”

“I had to look Cheryl in the eye every fucking time she brought Lindsey to therapy,” Alan said. “Do you know what she was thinking about every. Single. Time. She picked up her daughter? I’ll give you one guess.”

Alan glared at the ceiling. Sam’s mouth was dry. “And, yes, my abilities are visual,” Alan said bitterly.

“You could have helped her get out,” Sam said. “You could have changed your life.”

“Fuck that,” Alan said. “I’m not changing my entire life to save one girl. I’m not talking with corrupt police officers or a bored judge. I’m not getting death threats from the PTO board. An anonymous tip would’ve done nothing. Cheryl is immaculate. I could’ve killed Cheryl, but then the cops would have come knocking, not just you two.”

Alan was so confident. He spoke with ease, shoulders relaxed. He knew exactly how he felt and he meant it. 

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Dean said. “She went to you for help, you prick.”

Sam’s heart rate picked up. “Now hold on a second--”

“Oh, give it a rest, Sam,” Alan sighed. “I’m not some fragile nutcase. I’m not going to fly off the handle just because of a few weak insults.”

Dean huffed.

“Do you want to hear about Royce?” Alan asked, switching tracks. “About how his wife was stealing money from him and fucking his brother, that she’d been emotionally manipulating him and robbing him of his identity for half a decade? Do you want to hear about how I had to work with him for more than a year for him to grow a spine? Does it really matter if he turned a little chauvinistic? He didn’t kill anyone.”

“It does matter,” Sam said. “How many couples have you broken up? How many deaths are you responsible for?”

“More than that pretty little journalist picked up on,” Alan drawled. “I was working on this shit before I could read minds. That power was a gift. For the last six months, I’ve been telling people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. And it isn’t my fault that some of them can’t handle it. It’s for the best, if you ask me.”

Sam tamped down the welling frustration inside him. “It’s not your duty to be the truth giver. You can’t play God with people’s lives.”

“Oh, can’t I?” Adam responded. “God’s dead. Who the fuck else is going to do it? Would you rather these people live their whole lives without justice?”

“It’s not that simple,” Sam said. “You’re hurting more people than you help. I respect what you’re doing, I do. And I understand where you’re coming from. Better than anyone else, as you probably already know. But if you want to help people, don’t force the truth on them. Lead them to it. And do it as a therapist, not as a master manipulator.”

“Interesting take. I’ll consider it,” Alan said. “But a little pathetically optimistic. Just because the truth hurts doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. What I do is for the greater good. Do you want proof? I can do a demonstration.”

Sam swallowed. “Now hold on a minute.”

Alan righted himself with flourish, and met Sam and Dean’s eyes for a few beats before Sam had time to shout, “Dean! Cover your eyes!”

Sam closed his eyes, covering them with his hands, and he hoped that Dean was doing the same.

Alan laughed like he was genuinely delighted. “Oh, that’s not necessary,” he said. “I’m a fast learner.”

Sam felt sick. He kept his eyes shut but dropped his hands, hoping Alan was looking at the entreating expression on his face. “Alan,” he said, trying to infuse as much urgency in every syllable as possible, “don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what, Sammy?” Alan asked. “It sounds like you have something to hide.”

Sam didn’t respond to that.

He heard the shifting of fabric to his right, then the clicking of the safety on Dean’s colt going off. “Fuck this,” Dean growled.

“Don’t shoot!” Sam yelled. 

“I ain’t shooting, I’m holding him at gunpoint. Come on, Sam, we’re leaving,” Dean barked. 

Sam opened his eyes, but kept them low to the ground. 

“You kill anyone else, we kill you,” Dean said. “Keep your manipulative psycho shit to yourself.”

“So, what? You’re planning on babysitting me? How are you going to do that when the demon is still out there? When your mother and your father died for nothing? When you’re scared of your brother and when that freak spent six months in a djinn dream getting fucked by an emotionally intelligent, much improved version of yourself--”

Bang. Sam recoiled at the deafening sound of Dean’s gun going off. He looked at Alan’s bleeding corpse, Alan’s words ringing in his ears. Alan’s body slumped to the ground, limp. A pool of blood welled around his shattered skull. Pieces of brain were lodged in the chair he’d just been perched on.

Sam stared. 

“Sammy,” Dean shouted. A cloth was thrown at him. “Wipe your fuckin’ prints. We got five before the cops get here.”

Sam didn’t move.

Sam’s eyes were still averted, but he saw Dean’s legs approach in his periphery. “Sam,” Dean said, roughly shaking Sam’s shoulder. “Get the fuck up.”

The venom in Dean’s voice had Sam shakily standing, a foal just birthed in a Post-Truth world. In a Dean Knows world.

He did as Dean said and wiped his prints. He didn’t speak as he followed Dean out the back door, around the block, and into the Impala. Dean drove the speed limit through the neighborhood as sirens approached, but gunned it when they were on the highway, taking them far, far away from that damned house.

Dean drove the Impala in silence with the wheel clutched tightly in his hands, the radio off. Sam wanted to turn it on but he was afraid to move or make a sound. He looked out the window in muted shock. 

Dean had heard Alan, and what Alan had said had made Dean kill Alan. Then they had fled town. 

Now they were here.

The recap didn’t illuminate anything for Sam or reassure him. If anything, it only made him more uneasy, and each mile marker they passed felt like an omen.

Dean knew. Dean knew Dean knew Dean knew.

Sam’s throat was tight, his stomach was tight. He was lightheaded and he felt like was going to throw up. 

Dean knew--

Sam’s phone rang and he flinched hard enough to bump his head against Baby’s ceiling. Dean looked over at him and Sam averted his eyes, fumbling for his pocket and wriggling his phone out. He flipped it open just before the final ring.

“Hello?” he said breathlessly.

“Uh… Sam?” Bobby’s gruff voice said, tinny through the phone speaker. “Am I interrupting somethin’?” 

“No, sorry,” Sam said. “What is it, Bobby?”

“Just checking in on the case. You boys in town yet?”

“It’s… taken care of,” Sam said, ignoring the glance Dean sent him. “We left town.”

“Oh.” There was a beat of silence. “You boys coming back here? I got a few chores that need doing.”

Sam appreciated the offer, he really did. And he wanted to take it. “Thanks, Bobby, but I think we’re fine,” he said instead.

“Alright,” Bobby said. “Just don’t go disappearing on me, you hear?”

“I won’t. Bye, Bobby.”

“Bye, son.”

Sam hung up.

He braced himself, waiting for Dean to say something, anything, even something innocuous, so the floodgates could open.

He didn’t.

They drove in silence.


	12. Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

They stopped for the night somewhere in Tennessee. Dean pulled into the first motel he saw. He got out and headed for the front desk. Sam got out, stretching his aching legs--his aching everything, fuck--and limped to the trunk. He got their bags while Dean got the keys. 

By the time they were all set up in the room, the quiet was driving Sam insane. The unanswered questions were driving him insane. He had no idea how Dean felt, what Dean thought about him.

Dean went into the bathroom and came back out all while Sam stood there trying to summon some courage he didn’t think he had.

Dean stood by the other bed in his boxers, by all appearances ready to go to sleep.

“Is that it, then?” Sam burst out helplessly. He finally looked at Dean. He didn’t know what he saw there. “Are we just never going to speak again?”

Dean scoffed. “‘Course not. We talk.”

“We’re never going to talk about what happened with Alan?” Sam clarified, voice cracking.

Dean’s eyes flashed. “Shut up, Sam.”

He turned the light out and climbed into bed, curling up on his side facing away from Sam. 

Sam didn’t know how long he stood in the dark, staring at nothing. 

He was stiff when he finally moved to the other bed, still clothed, blood spray stained brown on his clothes. 

He was staring at the wall when he made his decision.

He listened to Dean’s even breaths, deep in sleep. He was silent as he packed a bag of the bare essentials. He slung it on his back and went for the door. He froze there.

He walked back to the nightstand and penned Dean a quick note on the motel stationery explaining that he left to clear his head. He left his laptop on his pillow for Dean to have.

He turned his phone off, hotwired a 2003 Pontiac in the parking lot, and left town.

He ran away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it's a short one!


	13. Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Logically, he knew running was a bad decision. He felt guilty for leaving Dean. They still had a lot of problems to deal with, and there were plenty of creatures that would love to get their hands on Sam. 

But he had to leave. 

He was going to explode. 

The further he got from Dean, and as it went from being late at night to early in the morning, the lighter in the chest Sam felt. Alone on a highway somewhere in the Midwest, Sam banged on the steering wheel and screamed himself hoarse.

Sitting at a rest stop picnic table, misty and alone except for a suspicious looking trucker who kept glancing at him, Sam’s entire body ached. His throat ached. His head ached.

It was surreal. It was so fucking surreal.

He’d gone so many years of his life able to completely ignore his problems. Dean had never noticed that Sam’s teenage worship went beyond simple little brother feelings, but when they were back on the road together, Sam kept his distance. And it didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like anything because he shut it down.

Then the damn djinn.

Then fucking Alan.

Sam was kind of grateful Dean had shot him. Dean had stabbed the djinn, too.

There was no justice left for Sam to take.

Sam did some stretches, ate food he couldn’t remember after the wrapper was in the trash, got some gas, and kept driving.

The sun rose and he tried not to think about Dean. He tried not to think about what Dean was thinking and what Dean was feeling and what Dean was doing.

Yet he kept going back to those things, scratching at them like a phantom limb. Dean’s ghost lurked around every corner, making Sam check twice, heart leaping into his throat. 

Sam drove like a man on the run, antsy, taking back roads and switching lanes, checking the rearview mirror every couple of seconds, memorizing cars that stayed behind him for long stretches of time. 

He took an exit without thinking, driving through a small town, all fast food signs, gas stations, and pay day loan centers. 

He reached an abandoned industrial park, and only realized where he was when the car rolled to a stop, engine clicking.

This was where he’d dreamed of a better life. This is where he’d felt alive for the first time in years.

Sam got out of the car and stared up at the hulking carcass of a factory. It was an overcast day, and cool, making the world feel subdued and quiet, like all of the animals were preparing for the oncoming storm.

Sam took a breath and walked inside.

He thought he’d recognize it, having spent so much time in it, but it looked like any old creepy factory he’d hunted in. It didn’t stir any emotions within him, didn’t make him feel safe or put him at ease.

He walked the halls at random until he stopped in a large open room, presumably the factory floor. Instead of being filled with conveyor belts and production machines, though, the room was barren, save for some knocked over I.V. poles and ropes in the dead center of the room.

Like a zombie, Sam walked into the middle. The floor here was brown instead of the gray of unstained concrete. He moved over to one rope pile and stared at it without feeling anything. This is where the girl had been. Dean had burned her.

Detachedly, Sam wondered how long the dream world would have held together without the girl crying out for help beside him, without Dean finding his way inside the factory and shaking Sam awake. If it was only him the djinn fed on, with no outside interruptions, could it feasibly last years?

Sam had read in the lore that djinns fed on a body’s energy until the energy was completely gone, and that a single body could last up to a month. Sam had been in the dream for two days, and it had felt like a couple of months. Even doubling that would be half a year in the dream. Multiplying it by fifteen… if a djinn fed off Sam for a month, the dream would last for almost four years.

Four whole years. 

Sam would have sold his soul for less if he knew it was real. 

Sam took one last look at the I.V.s before turning and walking straight out of the factory.

Sam found a nice-ish hotel a few towns over, somewhere Dean wouldn’t look. He went to the library and started searching internet news sites for possible djinn sightings. He scrolled through local Midwestern papers, searching for keywords related to mysterious disappearances and bodies found in strange places.

For hours, he made no progress, though he did find several other possible hunts that he saved in his email. Maybe he could set his computer up to automatically send them to Dean or Bobby, or maybe he could compile them all together and send them off before he left.

It was getting into the small hours of the night and Sam’s eyes were burning when something in a news article caught his eye.

It was a news article about a string of disappearances where one girl was saved, claiming she’d been drugged by her captor and hallucinated vividly. It pandered to the “war on drugs” crowd, comment section filled with outraged moms, but the details of the girl’s experience made Sam think it was a djinn.

It was in Springfield, Ohio. Only about three hours away from Sam’s current location. He could be there before daybreak.

His head jerked, his body begging for rest, and he sat up, blinking and yawning.

He could sleep for two hours. Then he could be there before lunch.

Yes, that could work.

Sam fell asleep before he even shut the light off, succumbing to a dreamless black.

***

When Sam awoke three hours later, he plugged his phone in and turned it on.

He was not excited about this part, but it was necessary. He watched the phone boot without feeling anything.

When it finally turned on, it proceeded to vibrate itself right off the nightstand. Sam picked it up and waited about three minutes for all the unread texts, missed calls, and voicemails to process.

Once that was done, Sam started on the text messages.

They were all from Dean.

They started out calmly enough, things like 

_ Dude where’d you go _

_ We gotta go soon _

To

_ Sam. Come on. _

To

_ Answer your phone you little idiot i just want to know if you’re alive _

_ Sammy please _

_ I’m gonna find you and I’m gonna kick your ass okay _

Sam bit his lip, staring down at the little digital screen. Guilt made his hands shaky and he forced himself to check the call log. Dean, Dean, Dean, Bobby, Dean, Bobby, Dean, Dean, Dean, Ash, Ellen, Dean, Bobby, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean.

The trembles reached his entire body by the time he was done listening to Dean’s increasingly desperate voicemails, interspersed with a few concerned voicemails from other people. 

Dean’s last voicemail was silent except for a cut off swear and a thunk of some kind. It had been left early this morning, just an hour or so before Sam awoke.

Sam’s phone started buzzing in his palm and he flinched hard enough to drop it. He fumbled for it, heart pounding, and checked the caller ID.

Bobby.

Sam answered it.

“Sam?” Bobby asked immediately. “Sam, son, you there?”

“Yeah.” Sam wet his lips. “Hi, Bobby.”

“Jesus fuckin’ christ,” Bobby swore, a violent slash of words. “Where the hell have you been? Your brother’s worried sick. We’re all worried sick.”

“I’m… hunting,” Sam tried, monotone. “I just needed some air.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. 

Bobby sighed. “If this is about the djinn, or about your fool brother--”

“It is, but I’m fine,” Sam admitted. “That’s why I’m hunting. Closure.”

Bobby was silent again. “You shouldn’t hunt alone. Where are you?”

Sam couldn’t think of a good enough lie in time. He could practically see Bobby shaking his head.

“No one’s pissed, not really,” Bobby spoke up, sounding casual. “You just gave us a scare. We’ll meet up with you, somewhere n--”

Sam hung up.

He turned his phone back off and threw it into his duffel. He took a long, shaky breath before limping over to his computer, leaning over to scribble down some Mapquest directions to Ohio.

Then, he was off, his life in his rearview mirror, and maybe, just maybe an escape on the road ahead.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sam made good time, hitting Springfield just before noon, his belly rumbling like clockwork the moment he ditched his old car and found a new one. He filled it up with gas and stopped at the nearest diner with peeling paint and elderly patrons. 

Sam didn’t waste any time. He refilled on supplies, interviewed the traumatized girl, and canvassed the town. 

There were three different old industrial parks that looked like contenders for a djinn hideout, as well as a few mansions in disrepair, and a mine. The mine was unlikely, given that all the signs out front proclaimed it would collapse at any moment.

He wouldn’t be able to check them out until night time. 

Back at the motel, Sam froze, feeling static.

He had a fake security uniform and ID. He had lamb’s blood, silver knives, guns, all the good stuff. He had everything he needed to go in and defend himself. 

He couldn’t think of anything to do with himself until then.

What used to bring him joy? What could burn away the hours? Nothing excited him, not a movie, a bar, a bookstore. 

Sam spent his day writing Dean letters.

Letters of apology, letters explaining everything, goodbye letters.

None of them felt right. They all felt awkward and formal, not able to cover enough ground. None of them shared what was in his head. And none of them felt like he was talking to Dean.

By the time the sun set, Sam had written about a dozen letters, most of which had been discarded halfway through. He folded each of them carefully into thirds and tucked them into the bottom of his duffel. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with them, but it was too late to make a decision.

Sam grabbed a pack with basic supplies and headed out.

***

It didn’t take him long at all to find the djinn.

One factory was more isolated than the others, set into a hill. It was the perfect place for some creepy crawly to set up his lair. 

Sam knew it was the right place the moment he slunk inside. There was a dark energy in the place, confirmed by the frightened sobs he could hear echoing from up ahead.

Keeping to the shadows, Sam crept forward. He reached the assembly line room, and saw a girl strung up as he’d been, shaking and rocking in her bindings. 

He waited, making sure the djinn was not around. Once he was certain, he jogged to the center of the room. The girl saw him and jolted, whimpers behind her gag growing more frantic.

“Hey. Hey. Shh. I’m here to help,” Sam whispered. “I’m gonna take you down, okay?”

Her eyes were wide and she was breathing heavily, but she nodded, dirty hair falling in front of her sweat-covered face.

Sam made quick work of the ropes holding her there and removed the I.V. from her arm with medical precision. She collapsed forward and he caught her with a grunt.

Sam didn’t think she’d been here long. After a little bit of coercion, and some rushed breathing exercises, she was able to stand up on her own, albeit with a slight wobble. 

Sam and the girl made it up to the nearest major road with no problems. He flashed her his fake detective badge and told her to head up the road. He called a cab for her and waited until it arrived before going back into the factory.

The djinn showed up around midnight.

It had no new prey with it, slumping back home with a slightly defeated posture. Sam watched from his hiding place as the djinn spotted the empty ropes and abandoned I.V. in the center of the room.

The djinn hurried over, crouching down to inspect the scene, sniffing it. He growled under his breath. He stood up, kicking at the medical debris.

It was then Sam stepped out of the shadows. The djinn didn’t notice him at first.

“Hey,” Sam called.

The djinn whipped around, facing him head on. The djinn blinked at him, hissing.

“I was captured by one of you a few months ago,” Sam said conversationally. “I lived in a dream world for a long time before my brother rescued me.”

The djinn watched him, unmoving. Sam knew if he didn’t get through the spiel and fast, the djinn would attack.

“I want to make a deal with you,” Sam said, “one I think you’ll like.”

The djinn cocked his head.

“Feed on me,” Sam said. “I’m strong and my body will last you for a long while. But only feed on me. Don’t take any other prisoners. Give me a dream world and I’ll give you my energy. I can take you to a safe place where no hunters will come after you.”

The djinn stayed still, and Sam could tell that behind his defensive glare, he was weighing Sam’s words.

“It’s a good deal,” Sam offered. “A meal, protection, safety, in exchange for my dream. What do you say?”

The djinn nodded.

Sam felt his body go weak with relief. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d wanted it back, how much he’d ached for that Dean until that stupid nod. He wanted to go back home.

“Good,” Sam said, voice a little rough. He knelt before the pile of rope, held his arms out. He looked up at the djinn who was still a distance away and staring at him. “Go ahead, then. There are directions to a hidden hideout in my right pocket, and keys to the car out front. You’ll be safe there.”

The djinn moved forward with inhuman speed, stopping right in front of Sam. He put a cold, tattooed hand on Sam’s chin, tilting his head. Sam felt a prickling in his jaw, like he was being gently electrocuted.

The djinn opened his mouth in a low growl, and his eyes glowed a bright, electric blue. Sam felt heat on his skin and knew the djinn had started his work, sending some kind of supernatural energy into Sam’s body.

Sam gasped; a raw, wounded sound. His eyelids fluttered. He was losing energy. He’d be asleep soon. He relaxed, welcoming it. He imagined Dean’s face, how happy he’d be to see Sam again.

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. The djinn put both of his hands on Sam’s temples, and the fall became steeper. Sam was floating. He was lighter than air. 

And soon, he would disappear into the sky.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Hey!” someone screamed, somewhere distant. Sam didn’t quite know where he was. Everything was echoey and watery. He was in a womb.

A sharp, loud sound, staccato and violent, rippled the black waters around him. No, please no, he thought. Don’t take me out of here.

Sam was moving in slow motion. He reached out for something to hold onto, anything, fingers straining for purchase, but the world fell through his fingers like sand in an hourglass.

He buried himself deeper, giving himself over, and he saw something in the distance. He swam toward it. The brightness resolved into a face, into Dean. Dean, clean shaven and smiling, happy and light enough to make him look ten years younger. Sam smiled back.

Another loud sound.

Dean was gone in a second, taken away from Sam.

“Hey!” Dean screamed, rough, cracked, violent. He put his hands on either side of Sam’s face and shook him violently. “HEY!”

Sam’s eyes blinked open, and he looked into the sunken, raging eyes of another Dean, a stubbled Dean with lines on his face and a disappointment so severe it reminded Sam of John.

Dean slapped Sam. Sam didn’t react. “Jesus fucking christ,” Dean growled. He shook Sam again, his eyes wet. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Huh? Huh?”

Dean’s hands dropped away from Sam’s face and Sam took his first breath, letting oxygen into his lungs again. It burned. He coughed. 

Dean got his arms under Sam’s armpits and hauled Sam up, grunting. Sam was limp at first, but his feet found purchase and he found himself standing. Dean shifted, swearing and making animal sounds, until he had one arm around Sam, their sides squashed together.

“Walk with me,” Dean barked, loud. Dean moved forward and Sam belatedly struggled after him, like a poor quality marionette.

Sam faded in and out of focus as Dean walked him from the factory, past his stolen car, and to the Impala.

Dean forced him into the backseat, throwing a blanket over him. A beat later and the car was accelerating hard, forcing Sam back against the seat.

He closed his eyes.

***

Something sharp and painful prodded at Sam’s side. He opened his eyes and found Dean bent over him, frowning as usual. “Get up.”

Sam got up.

He stood, stretching, and oh, fuck, were his back and shoulder absolutely screwed. They felt like stones. He tested his range of movement, gravel crunching under his boots, as Dean stood by and watched with arms crossed and eyes shuttered.

Dean cleared his throat. “You done?”

Yeah. That was probably as good as it was going to get. Sam nodded.

He took his first look around. 

They were at a rest stop, still fairly Midwestern. Just by checking out the style of the welcome center and the license plates, Sam could tell they were headed West, presumably back toward Bobby’s house.

Dean said something, but Sam ignored him. He ambled into the rest stop, still feeling like he didn’t quite exist, that he wasn’t quite here. The detached feeling lasted through his business. Back at the Impala, he sat in the passenger seat instead of the backseat.

He could feel Dean staring at him, but he didn’t have the energy to engage. He didn’t speak. Neither did Dean.

The world blurred by. It looked the same as always.

At some point, Dean cleared his throat. “I could eat,” he said, words hanging with clearly pronounced expectation.

Sam stayed quiet.

Dean snorted; it was a derisive sound. “What was it you said? ‘Are you ever going to talk to me again?’”

Sam pulled in a thready breath. His chest hurt.

“I could eat,” he echoed quietly.

Dean didn’t say anything, but he moved into the right lane, and took the next exit that came up.

It was some Indiana highway town populated by exclusively fast food joints, gas stations, and cheap hotels. Dean found an IHOP and dragged Sam inside.

The place was desolate, save for a few tables of geriatrics slowly eating soup. Dean and Sam tucked themselves into a corner booth and a dispassionate teenage waitress tossed sticky menus at them.

Sam perused his, but it was all for show. He wasn’t hungry and he was already familiar with what items here had the least chance of coming back up.

The set to Dean’s jaw said he was doing the same thing. The waitress came back and Sam ordered something innocuous, like a grilled chicken salad. 

They had only been sitting in silence for a few minutes when Dean bunched up a napkin and threw it at Sam’s face. Sam twitched. He grabbed it out of his lap and started pressing it into a smaller and smaller ball. His skinned knuckles burned and protested as he squeezed the starchy paper against his palm.

“Sam,” Dean said. “I don’t know. Shit. Just give me something.”

Sam looked up at Dean and his hands froze. The tiredness on Dean’s face mirrored Sam’s. What Sam had been afraid to see there--what he had been seeing there--was not present. There was no disgust or malice. Dean was just tired. Tired and worried and maybe a little pissed. Like the time Sam hadn’t brought his phone to the bookstore and got distracted by a new title from his favorite author for over an hour.

Sam’s throat tightened at the memory. Had that happened in real life, or in the dream? Where did it end and begin? He could no longer remember.

He met Dean’s gaze point blank, letting all his cards show. He shook his head. “I’m tired,” he said.

Dean’s eyes flicked between his, searching. Whether Dean found what he was looking for or not, Sam didn’t know, but Dean leaned back and looked out the window, cutting Sam off.

The waitress came by with their food, and Dean shoved half of his giant onion rings onto Sam’s plate. “Greasy food will help,” he said. “Trust me.”

Sam didn’t want to, but he pointedly nibbled at the onion rings.

They didn’t talk as they ate, but the silence didn’t feel as weighted and toxic. 

Sam felt almost normal for the twenty minutes of the drive that went by just fine. 

He wasn’t surprised when he sprinted into a rest stop bathroom five minutes later, puking out the whole meal in the toilet, still partially undigested.

Dean waited by the Impala, and Sam appreciated that Dean didn’t comment as Sam got back into the car. 

Dean kept the radio off as they drove. Sam swallowed, his mouth still a little pukey. “How did you find me?” he asked past a rough throat.

“Bobby’s call,” Dean said. “Said you told him you were hunting. I knew you were too smart to do that on your own unless you had a death wish.” Dean laughed, eyes on the road ahead, hard, lips smile-grimacing. “Then we started looking for djinn.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh, too. He’d done so much work to stay covert, to cover his tracks, to leave Dean in a better situation when it was all over. “I didn’t realize I was so obvious.”

“Yeah, well, I know you.”

Sam couldn’t respond to that. Dean was quiet. He knew they were both thinking about what Alan had said. 

The car jerked, and Sam flinched, turning in his seat, searching all around the car for some assailant or something wrong. Nothing was there. The car bounced and rumbled as Dean pulled over onto the gravel side of the highway.

There was nothing but farmland in all directions, spreading off into the distance in squares of ochre, dotted with green trees.

Dean turned the car off and got out. 

Heart pounding, Sam scrambled for the passenger door and fell out after Dean. 

There was a crooked power line parallel to the road, and next to that, a set of train tracks. Dean crossed under the power lines and over the train tracks. There was a small meadow before the cornfield began.

Sam caught up to Dean there. Dean paced back and forth, grasses hissing against his jeans as he moved. 

Sam watched. He opened his mouth, about to ask Dean something, anything, when Dean stopped moving and whirled around to face Sam.

“You wanna talk about it?” Dean barked. “Or don’t you? ‘Cause I think we’re about to fucking talk about it.”

Sam blinked. “Okay.”

“Alan was telling the truth,” Dean stated.

A fresh wave of nausea threatened to knock Sam off his feet, but he managed to stay upright. He swallowed thickly and nodded. “Yeah.”

Dean made some nasty snort-laugh sound of disbelief. He held his hands out wide. “So, in some fantasy world, I was fucking you and wearing an apron and baking you pies while you went off to be some lawyer? Is that what you saw? Not Jess?”

“I’d rather be in the apron,” Sam said, voice faint, body feeling the same.

Dean was in Sam’s space in a second poking him roughly in the chest with a fire in his eyes. “This is not some fucking joke. Not a word from you in days and you’ve got jokes?”

“It’s not a joke!” Sam screamed back, surprising himself hoarse. Dean’s eyes were wide and he stumbled backward. 

Sam had been putting blankets on the coals with as much effort as he could, over and over, but the moment he stopped, the gasoline poured out again and the fire was roaring.

He made no effort to stop it.

“It’s never been a joke!” Sam screamed. “This is my life! This is how I feel! And I never did anything about it, I kept it down, and I was never going to act on it. I know it’s wrong. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know how royally fucked up I am? I never wanted to subject you to that! But Alan took that away from me!”

Sam was breathless. His throat hurt. His body was trembling and burning and aching all over. He’d stepped into the flames and now he was the fire.

Dean opened his mouth to speak and Sam pushed him away. He had more energy than he thought and Dean fell on his ass in the grass and Queen Anne’s lace, staring up at Sam with wide eyes.

“The djinn dream was months. Months,” Sam choked out. He could barely speak. He could barely see, blurry-eyed. His hands were clenched into fists so tight his nails drew blood from his palm. “Everything was the same. We were hunting. But you were so… connected to me. I didn’t feel scared to tell you anything. And yeah, we. We touched. We were happy. I don’t know what you want me to say. I cut myself from those feelings as much as I could and then I lived in a world with them for months, so, yeah, I’m having a hard fucking time.”

“We’re not happy here?” Dean said. He made no effort to stand. “You’re scared to tell me things? Things are so shit with me that you’d rather die?”

Sam laughed, tears falling in earnest now. “That’s not fair,” he managed. “I love you, Dean, but fuck you. This isn’t your pity party.”

Dean got up and dusted himself off. “You’re right. It isn’t.”

He turned and walked back across the train tracks.

Sam jogged to catch up with him. “Dean,” he tried, but Dean ignored him and walked right up to the car and sat inside. For a brief moment Sam thought Dean was going to drive away without him.

Sam slid into the passenger seat as fast as he could, breathless, and Dean jerked the car back onto the highway before Sam had even shut his door, the inertia shutting it for him. He held on tightly while Dean pushed Baby to her limit until they were speeding off again, trapped in a cage of silence and bitter, half-expressed feelings.

Sam looked out the window. His tears had dried into tracks on his cheeks that he could feel when he moved his face. His throat was sore. 

And he had no idea what the hell kind of world he and Dean were driving into.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was dinner time when they got to Bobby’s, the sunset a flaming red, and Bobby was in the kitchen making Sam’s favorite chili when they walked in.

Bobby was chatty, barely leaving any room for awkward and pained silences, updating them on the Roadhouse, on possible hunts, and that Sam could go right back to physical therapy if he wanted.

Bobby asked him several questions, most of which were tactful ways to gauge his mental and physical health, and Sam tried to respond as best as he could, to bring life to the conversation, to salvage the darkness they’d brought to Bobby’s home, but it was no use.

Dean was silent and dour-faced, stabbing at his bowl, eating quickly and leaving without excusing himself. He disappeared upstairs and a door closed a beat later.

Alone with Bobby, Sam had no idea what to do with himself, but he didn’t want to be alone with Dean, either. He helped Bobby do the dishes, waiting for the eventual fatherly wisdom.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“I got caught by a djinn once,” Bobby said, so conversationally that it took Sam’s brain a moment to catch up.

He dried off a plate and put it in the proper cabinet. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah.” Bobby nodded. “I wasn’t in there for very long, mind you, but I know what it’s like to get what they give ya and have it yanked right back away.”

Bobby shook his head. “If Rufus hadn’t been there to shake some sense into me, I woulda eaten a bullet. Trust me. I know what it’s like.”

Sam swallowed. “Bobby--”

Bobby put down his dish rag and turned to face Sam head on. “Kid, I ain’t gonna ask what you saw in there. You want it bad and Dean hates it. What you want isn’t what you should have. Maybe it’s something you’d go to hell for.”

Sam couldn’t speak.

“Everybody has something, deep inside,” Bobby said. “I didn’t see my wife. I didn’t see suburbia. And I don’t think you did, either. But you can’t go thinkin’ you’re a monster for whatever it is you saw.”

Sam snorted.

“I don’t think you could surprise me,” Bobby said. “You need time to re-adjust. And Dean needs time to be less of a fool. It will get better.”

“Things never get better for us.”

Bobby shrugged. “Sure, the world’s ending. But you boys will be okay. That’s why you’re gonna stay here and help an old man like me until you’re better. Got it?”

Sam shook his head. He couldn’t help a smile. “Got it.”

Bobby pat him firmly on the shoulder. “If you ever need to punch something, or someone to scream at, you call me, okay?”

“Okay,” Sam said softly. “Thanks, Bobby.”

Bobby nodded. “I can finish up here,” he said. “You go upstairs.”

Sam nodded back. He waved at Bobby and left. Heading up the creaky stairs, he took a breath. He didn’t want to be alone with Dean again, but it wasn’t exactly something he could avoid.

Sam stepped into their room at the same time Dean left. 

Sam sat on the bed, feeling numb.

While he sat there, Dean thundered down the stairs, keys in hand, and alcohol on the mind. He had a favorite shitty joint in Sioux Falls where he’d drowned his sorrows and repressed things many times before. 

Before he could make it to the door, Bobby stopped him.

Dean reigned in a sigh. “Bobby--”

“You can go be your father, I don’t care,” Bobby said. “But you’re going to listen to me first.”

Dean made no move. 

“You can’t push Sam away like this,” Bobby said.

Dean barked out a laugh. “That’s rich. Do you want me to tell you what Sam dreamed of? Because I think you’d come drink with me if you knew.”

Bobby held up a hand. “I don’t need to know, and if I do, it shouldn’t come from you. It doesn’t matter what the hell you saw. That information wasn’t meant for you, for anyone other than Sam, and now you have it. Now it’s out beyond his control. You easily could have been put in that situation.”

Dean shook his head. “Not like this.”

“Bull,” Bobby said. “What a djinn shows you is something you don’t even know you needed. And once it’s gone, it’s like you can never breathe deeply again. I should know.”

“Bobby--”

“Whatever you saw was your brother’s heart flayed open. And you judging him is only adding to the fire. He’s hurting right now in a way you can’t understand. You two boys are all you have. So stop all your guilt and drama and help the damn boy before he makes another suicide attempt.”

Dean flinched. Bobby was so frank, so real with things that Dean would much rather not think about. 

“Help him,” Bobby emphasized. “Even if it makes you sick. Help him.”

Dean swallowed. “You make it sound so easy,” he said weakly. He laughed, a hollow, joyless sound.

Bobby shook his head. “It won’t be easy,” he said. “Not ever. But it will get easier. That’s what I just told your fool brother, too. Y’all are staying here until you’re both healed up, inside and out. Or I’ll shoot you in the knees and wheel you around myself. Okay?”

Dean nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.” Bobby wiped his hands on his pants. “I don’t want to be yelling at both of you the entire time you’re here, okay? I may be an uncle to the both of you but I ain’t gonna babysit.”

Bobby stepped out of the way, leaving the path to the door clear. “That’s all I wanted to say,” he said. “Now make your decision.”

Dean looked at Bobby, at the bright concern shining out from under his gruff, no nonsense exterior.

Dean pushed past him and left the house.

***

Upstairs, Sam heard the Impala’s engine turn over. He’d heard Bobby’s voice echo around, muffled, words unintelligible, but knew Bobby was probably trying to drill some sense into Dean’s head. The Impala drove away, hum of the engine getting quieter and quieter.

Sam ran a hand through his hair. 

A big part of him still yearned for a djinn, to go back. He could never stop thinking, and even now, his brain raced through other ideas, including guns, knives, pills, bathtubs. Including dreamroot, spells, curses, hexes. 

He knew he couldn’t try any of them. It wouldn’t help anything. And neither would ignoring it and pushing it down deep. He’d tried that and it had blown up in his face.

He needed to push through it. He needed to exist, in pain and misery, until it got easier to bear.

He just wasn’t sure how.

***

Dean slipped into the bar and his shoulders went loose. It smelled like spilled beer and loose peanuts, and the chatter of voices talking to each other was raised to a cacophony. To his right, the cue ball clacked loudly as it hit the eight ball on a pool table. People watched the game with beers in hand. A billion jumbo T.V.s broadcasted different sports games.

Dean headed straight for the bar, hopping onto the only free stool. The bartender was occupied, and he didn’t mind waiting and soaking up the atmosphere for a while until it was time for him to get his fix.

A woman across the bar made eye contact. Dean looked back, but he was too tired to summon his usual prowess, and she eventually looked away.

Dean ordered two straight whiskeys and tossed them down the hatch real easy. The burn was therapeutic and he felt more relaxed by the second.

He grabbed a few peanuts and munched on them idly.

He’d thrown a few more drinks down the hatch and had watched the Tigers steal a lead in the eighth inning when someone cleared their throat to his right.

He turned his head and found the woman from earlier standing at his side. She smiled at him. Even from his seated position on the barstool, Dean could tell she was tall, as tall as he was. She filled out her red dress and her red lips smiled invitingly. She had blonde hair and perky tits and every part of him was interested. He’d only seen her from across the bar and up close she was gorgeous. Exactly his type. Exactly the kind of girl with whom he’d lay the charm on thick.

Dean smiled back, leaning back. He tilted his chin up, beckoning her, and she sat on the stool next to him. “Hey there.”

Her smile widened, her eyes saying she was being patient with Dean’s cheesiness. “Hey there. Don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“Oh, yeah? You a regular?”

The woman shrugged. “I know my way around the place,” she said. She held a hand out. “Lucy.”

Dean shook it. Their touch lingered before he pulled his hand away. “Dean.”

She drew his bowl of peanuts toward her with one manicured finger. “So what brings you to a shitty pub in Sioux Falls of all places?” Lucy asked, crunching on a peanut. “Doesn’t suit you.”

“And what does?”

Lucy shrugged. She flagged the waiter down. “Austin,” she said. “Or Dallas, maybe. Now you answer my question.”

Dean opened his mouth, but the bartender arrived right then. He waited while Lucy ordered “the usual” and the bartender came back with a dry martini with lime. Lucy sipped at it, eying him. 

“I’m here with family,” Dean explained. He searched for a cover story and some part of him urged him to make it close to the truth, even as the truth curdled on his tongue. “My brother’s laid up from a stupid injury so I came over to help him out.”

“That’s so nice of you,” Lucy said. “Are you and your brother close?”

Yeah, this was definitely not what Dean wanted to spend the night thinking or talking about. “Fairly close,” he said, casually, “but, to be honest, I’m glad to be here for other reasons.”

Lucy rolled her eyes at the pickup line, smiling. “Am I what you’re looking for?” she asked.

“That depends on if you’re looking for something, too,” Dean said. “It’s more what we find together that I’m interested in.”

Lucy laughed outright at that. “You know life isn’t Craigslist missed connections, right?”

Dean snorted. He sunk the rest of his last whiskey, feeling loose, inhibitions gone. “It works for me most of the time,” he said. “And, hey, if it ain’t broke…”

Lucy raised her glass, clinking it again against his empty one. “I’ll drink to that.”

She downed the rest of it in one go, then squeezed the lime juice into her mouth. A drip of it went down the side of her lip. 

Dean wiped it off with his hand.

Their eyes met. There was no more dancing around, testing the waters.

She was interested. He was interested. There was only one thing left to do.

“You want to go home with me?” Lucy asked, breathless.

In that moment, Dean’s brain betrayed him. 

The right answer was yes. The logical answer was yes. His downstairs brain was throwing a celebratory party. He could even rationalize it as therapeutic.

But something gave him pause.

He could go home with Lucy. He could go up to her bedroom and fuck her and pass out and slink home before the sun. He could continue the pattern, leaving all his problems behind.

Leaving Sam behind, maybe.

In that stupid moment, he couldn’t think about what Lucy’s pussy would feel around his dick. He couldn’t think about how her tits would fit in his hand, her clit in his mouth. 

He was only thinking about Sam.

Stupid fucking Sam and his stupid fucking djinn dream back at Bobby’s.

Thinking about Lucy like that and how the whiskey made his brain slippier and it took him down a weird path. 

What did Sam want? Was it this? 

“You can say no,” Lucy interjected. Dean jumped back to reality. He expected her to look offended or angry but she almost looked concerned, scrutinizing him, lips pursed. 

“No, I do, it’s just…” Dean had no excuse.

Lucy shook her head. She smiled. She dropped something into his palm. “Go exorcise your demons,” she said. “Another time, cowboy.” She brushed past him, slapping his ass and disappearing into the crowd.

Dean looked down at his palm.

In the center of it was a bar napkin with her number written on it, crumpled up real small.

Dean snorted. He put the napkin in his pocket and headed out of the bar and back home.

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He was probably too drunk to drive and he knew that was wrong. But when his mind slipped into a groove, when it was one track and one track only, there was no escaping it, save for letting the song play out all the way through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the POV change is sudden, but I felt it was necessary for this part of the story. Thank you for your patience.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sam jolted when the bedroom door slammed open and Dean loped inside, his bowlegged gait especially pronounced. He must be drunk. Dean stumbled in, kicking off his boots, and Sam smelled whiskey.

He watched warily as Dean shed layers all the around the room until he was down to a t-shirt and jeans with the front of his belt open. Dean disappeared into the bathroom and came back out a few moments later looking more alive.

Their eyes locked. Sam couldn’t look away. Something passed between them.

Dean came and sat heavily down on the bed next to Sam’s, swinging his legs around until he was facing Sam.

Sam faced Dean. He waited. He couldn’t tell if Dean was his executioner or something else, but he knew whatever this was, it had to happen. 

He watched while Dean floundered for his words, starting and stopping countless times.

“Sammy,” Dean finally sighed out, staring at the floor. “Sammy, I just wanna talk to you.”

Sam swallowed. He lifted his head and Dean looked up at him. “Then talk.”

Dean nodded. He straightened. “Your dream…” he trailed off, face going pink. “What was it like?”

Sam couldn’t tell if his chest was loosening and tightening. He laughed, a little thing, Dean’s eyes still so damn wary and glassy and weird. 

Fuck it.

The only way out of his was through it.

Sam sighed, leaning back on his palms. He looked up at the ceiling but he didn’t see it. He was back in the dream, in the dream world. 

“It was just you and me,” Sam said. “We were on the road together, and everything was good. Too good. You’d do little things… get my coffee, make my favorite food… we’d solve cases without big body counts, and reunite moms with their daughters, you know? It was just good. It wasn’t perfect. But we were making a difference.”

Sam stopped. Dean was still looking at him with those same eyes. Sam took a moment to collect his thoughts and gather his strength before continuing.

“You were just… happier. Like your eyes were lighter. You were honest with me, man, not that you aren’t now, but just… it came freely to us. We actually talked. And the more we did it, the more there was something there, something that neither of us could hide. All it took was a near death experience and we both just…”

Sam was not going to go into that much detail. His ears burned and he shrugged. “We were on the same page,” he said, awkwardly clearing his throat. “And once we both got past all that, once we could just be together, it was like we were free.”

“I thought you wanted the white picket fence,” Dean croaked.

Sam laughed. “That’s what I thought I wanted,” he said. “But I always felt guilty, wrong. Even with Jess. With you I just feel right. I know that’s corny. But in that dream world, we knew exactly what the other was thinking. There was no bad blood. If we went out together, we’d go out together. And if we didn’t… maybe the white picket fence isn’t completely out of the question. But not with some girl. With you.”

“You gotta know that’s insane,” Dean said.

Sam laughed, his throat full and wet. “What of our lives isn’t?” he replied. “You don’t think that could happen, ever? Not in a parallel universe?”

Dean was quiet.

Dean coughed again. “What was a day like? What details?”

Sam felt like a butterfly, pinned to a board with care and precision, under observation but still dead inside. “We did hunts all around the country,” he said. “One time, we stayed at this bed and breakfast that someone Bobby knew owned, so it was dirt cheap. There was this diner on the corner that you loved, so in between casing neighborhoods and doing research, we’d sit and share a plate of peanut butter pancakes.”

Dean actually smiled at that. “Sounds nice.”

“Things would be hard, and we’d suffer some losses and bicker like assholes, or even split up, but at the end of the day, we’d find what we needed,” Sam said. “We’d have a plan. And we’d be in sync, no matter what was going on between us. It was like all my fear melted away. I knew you were there and that we could do anything, so a single ghoul was nothing.

“And when the hunt was over, people would be happy, and you’d be all giddy, like you were a kid again. We’d go out drinking and you’d tease me until we were both buzzed and stupid. We’d go home and watch a dumb movie and eat Sour Patch Kids. It would be a movie we both knew word for word, so when you turned and whispered something in my ear, we wouldn’t miss anything…”

“Sammy,” Dean broke in, a little sharp, a little breathless. “Stop.”

“You knew exactly what to say,” Sam continued in a whisper, and all at once, he was on the verge of tears. “Some stupid joke, so cheesy, but because it’s you, still hot. And you’d get this look in your eye like you knew exactly what you were doing to me. And when you touched me, I--”

Dean stood up off the bed, looming over Sam. “Stop,” he barked out. “Stop it.”

“No,” Sam choked out and the first tear fell. “You wanted to know. So I’m telling you.”

“That’s really what you want?” Dean said. “You want some fucking storybook? Well I’m not fucking perfect, Sam! I’m not going to compliment your hair and bake you cookies!”

“I don’t care!” Sam screamed. He was hoarse and red in the face. He stood up, getting into Dean’s space. “You’re not fucking perfect, you’re right about that, you goddamned asshole. But you’re still good. And I’m always going to want you. Sorry.”

Dean’s hands came up to his cheeks, sweaty and uncertain, and Dean pulled him forward for a rough kiss.

Sam brought his arm down on Dean’s wrist and pushed him until Dean fell back on the bed, the mattresses squeaking under the sudden burden. Sam laughed, a wobbly, ugly thing. “You can’t just do that, you asshole,” he grit out. He shook his head. He was trembling in anger. “Not like this.”

“I don’t know what you want,” Dean said.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Sam said, and god damn it, he was crying again. “I don’t want you to do what I want. I want you to do what you feel.”

Dean’s brows creased in anger, but his eyes were just as wet as Sam’s. “I don’t know how I fucking feel,” Dean said, but his voice was just tired. “I just don’t know anymore.”

Sam beat down the selfish inch of hope that rose in his chest at Dean’s words. 

“You loved me?” Dean asked, so quietly.

Sam laughed. He wiped at his face. “I did, and I do now,” he said. 

Dean nodded.

Sam sat back down. They looked at each other. “Now you know,” Sam rasped. He sniffled. “I don’t hate you, Dean, I don’t want you to be perfect. But sometimes you can be such a fucking asshole. And sometimes things are so hard that I just…” he looked away. “The djinn knows just how to draw you in, and when you come out, it’s like a part of you is gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said.

Sam shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

“No,” Dean said. “For… for this. For doing this to you.”

Sam shook his head again, this time with a wry smile. “I have a feeling you’re going to be saying that again.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, probably.”

Silence lapsed. Sam played with a loose thread on his jeans. “Do you still think I’m a freak?”

“No,” Dean said, and Sam knew Dean was telling the truth. “I never did.”

Sam took a breath. It no longer felt like someone was trying to pull stitches through his heart. 

“Can we start over?” Dean asked. “Or, just. Try again?”

Sam nodded. He wiped away the last tears. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Okay. Good.” Dean shifted, uncomfortable, the moment over. “I’m gonna go take some Tylenol.”

Sam nodded. Dean got up and left. In the room alone, Sam looked down at his hands.

He didn’t think things were actually fixed, or would ever be the way they were before. But the truth was out, finally, fully out, and Dean understood, and Sam finally felt okay, just a little. 

He was still full of aches that would follow him through his life, but he was okay. 

The world would spin on.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

And spin on it did. 

Sam went to physical therapy and got better. Bobby found hunts. Dean grew restless. The Impala was spotless, new brake pads, ready for the highway, a reminder out the window that grew more insistent each day.

That morning, when Bobby sat down to breakfast, he had a newspaper with an article circled.

He passed it to Sam. 

“A haunting in Grosse Pointe,” Bobby said. “Promise it’s not a test run. Last hunter who tried to help got toasted. You in?”

Sam passed the paper to Dean. Dean skimmed it. “We’ll leave tonight and be there in two days,” he said. “There’s a burger joint on the way there that I have a coupon for.”

***

Two days later, they were in a motel in Grosse Pointe, articles taped to the wall, laptop powered up, wifi on, body count piling up, local police useless.

A hunter did in fact die, but Sam was pretty certain it was just because he was incompetent. The trail he started was fairly easy to follow, and with just a few hours of intense library archive plundering, Sam was pretty sure the butler did it. For real. And since butlers were the leaders of servants and fairly distinguished in their own regard, it wasn’t hard to find family information and even burial plots. 

Grosse Pointe was nice. But its niceness was weird.

Lots of people knew what Hollywood looked like--huge Victorian and gothic homes on tiny parcels of land on busy streets for millions and millions of dollars. Grosse Pointe was developed around the same time, and auto industry tycoons built the same kinds of houses here, only the plots of land were bigger, the streets more private, and the general feel more wealthy.

Like Hollywood and South Central, Grosse Pointe was adjacent to Detroit. The difference was stark, even as Detroit improved. The niceness here felt like people looking in every direction except the big city. People were kind, sure, but their eyes were shut.

It gave Sam an odd feeling.

The odd feeling continued through the hunt as Sam researched long dead barons and trails of wealth, adultery, and deceit. Everywhere he looked, he couldn’t help but feel the same shame emanate from other houses, other nice cars, other people. The city had a history, fraught with hardship, racism, and tall, tall walls that kept everyone out and everything in. 

It made the hunt feel like Agatha Christie, and not in a good way.

Before long, Sam’s paper trail had fewer and fewer gaps, and they were certain which item buried with the butler would do the job. No one else would die.

Sam had been in many cemeteries and graveyards late at night, but breaking into a high-security, “luxury” cemetery was a first. The grass was manicured, the gravestones polished, but nothing changed the fact it was a creepy place of dead people.

He and Dean wandered the cemetery in silence, flashlight beams held low. Sam didn’t feel completely back to normal, not with Dean, like they thought they were on the same page but it turned out the words were jumbled. Still, they were coordinated, they were working together, and Sam knew Dean had his back.

Right now, that was all that mattered.

Dean found the right plot first. He clicked his flashlight twice and Sam made a beeline for him. He added his beam to Dean’s, read the name and death date on the stone. Yup. Beloved by many. Probably not.

They shared a quick look before they got to digging. They took shifts. 

Sam was on lookout when the butler appeared. He shouted for Dean, raised his salt gun, and fired. The ghost disappeared with the wind, but reappeared closer to Sam. His hand came up to Sam’s throat, cold and powerful, closing his airway. Sam choked and reached blindly for his iron knife. The ghost reared back, and slammed Sam into a tall marble cross.

Sam felt the wires in his head jumble. His vision went gray and blurry as he slid to the ground. The stone was cold against his back. He heard Dean shout his name. Shots were fired. Distantly Sam wondered how soon it would be before the cops show up.

Time meant nothing after that, Sam’s thoughts going slippery. He couldn’t get a handle on them. Something went white at the edge of his vision, then yellow. From the flickering yellowness came a shadow. The shadow had cold hands that framed Sam’s face.

“Sammy?” Dean asked.

Dean’s breath sucked. It made Sam’s face shrivel up. He blinked slowly and looked up at his brother. “Hurt my head.”

Dean dropped his head in relief. He looked back up with slightly glassy eyes. “Yeah?” he laughed. “How bad?”

Sam swallowed lead. He couldn’t move his neck. “Real bad.”

Dean’s smile was erased. He felt around the back of Sam’s head, and the look on his face wasn’t good. 

Sirens. They both looked at the same time. Dean pursed his lips. He leaned in close. Sam shut his eyes. 

“I’m going to have to carry you,” Dean said, and Sam opened his eyes back up. “We gotta get out of here.”

Sam tried to nod, but it was really starting to hurt. 

Dean leaned forward and got his arms under Sam. Before Sam knew it, Dean was grunting, and Sam was moving, held up in a bridal carry.

“Gotta put some meat on you,” Dean muttered under his breath. Sam probably wasn’t supposed to hear that.

Sam drifted. Being carried was nice. The lull of the Impala was nice. The motel bed was nice.

The sun in his eyes was not nice. He squinted and coughed. The sun was eclipsed by Dean’s frazzled face. “Sammy? You okay?”

Sam’s lips stuck together. He smacked them and looked up at Dean. It was a little hard to keep things in focus. “Water?”

“Shit, yeah.” Dean held a glass up and helped Sam get upright. Sam drank greedily and felt a little more normal but still like a robot that knew it was a robot and his programming was glitching.

He felt the lump on the back of his head. Golfball sized with at least a dozen stitches. He winced and put his hand down.

“It was a bad one,” Dean said. “But you’ve had worse.”

Speaking of. Sam reached back and felt his shoulder. It was tight. So was his back. But thanks to Dr. Gill, they didn’t feel quite as fucked as they might’ve.

Sam groaned. “Why is it always me?”

“You got me,” Dean chuckled. “At this point I’d give anything to jump in the witch’s cauldron at least once.”

Dean leaned in, brushing Sam’s hair out of his face. “How’re you feeling?”

Dean was too close. Sam swallowed. “M’okay.”

“To ten?”

“Five.”

Dean nodded. He stayed on the side of Sam’s bed, one arm propped on the mattress next to Sam’s arm, face close enough to breathe on. Sam waited for something to happen.

“Sammy-” Dean cut himself off. He looked at the far wall, eyes distant.

Sam didn’t say anything.

Finally, Dean looked back over at him. “When I saw the blood on the headstone, I felt a part of me just fuckin’...” Dean waved his arms around. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like… to lose the other him.”

Sam’s breath hitched. “Dean--”

“S’okay,” Dean said. “I just. I can’t lose you. Not to a ghost and not to that damned djinn. I don’t know what I want, but.” Dean took Sam’s hand, folded it in both of his. “Can I take care of you? Please.”

Sam nodded. His throat was full. “Okay.”

Dean nodded back. “Okay.” He smiled.

Sam smiled back.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The road became home again.

A real home.

A looseness to Sam’s bones, muscles stretched, stitches pulled, fresh air breathed.

He healed. In more ways than one. And so did Dean. Questions were asked and answered. Flowers bloomed and the green and heat of summer hit. The sun turned, and the days got longer, along with Sam’s hair. 

They dotted their way across the Midwest, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Great Plains. They learned more, they prepared, they met new people, friend and foe and psychic kid alike. They came back to Bobby and the Roadhouse and set off again. Even as evil lurked above their heads, and uncertainty plagued their dreams, there was something therapeutic about stopping for gas, embedding blades into chests, unfolding yellowed maps. 

They were in Colorado when they ran into a demon. 

The demon had eyes like indigo and she laughed when she looked at Dean, the shadows at her feet darker and fuller than others in the room. “You’re a fucked up little man, aren’t you?” she said. “You and all those feelings.”

She held a hand out and Dean clutched his stomach and screamed. Sam was chanting the exorcism before she’d even curled her fist.

She looked at Sam like he was a minor annoyance. She flicked her head and Sam was thrown against a bookshelf. Something in his back pulled like he was an old man and his vision went grey and he bit the inside of his cheek and kept chanting. Faster and faster. Even as she tossed him around the room like a pinball.

It wasn’t long before she screamed and blue smoke burst from her nose and mouth, escaping out the fireplace. Sam didn’t wait and watch to see her go. He stumbled over to Dean as soon as he could, throat aching, spine twinging. He puked a little in his mouth.

He fell down before his brother, getting his arms on him, helping him sit up. Sam’s hands wandered, pressing all over Dean’s abdomen, trying to see where he was hurt, pulling up his shirt to see if any place was dark with bruise or internal bleeding.

Dean’s fingers curled around Sam’s wrist, stopping him. “Woah, hey, kiddo,” Dean said with a raspy laugh. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?” Sam asked, still frantic, heart in his throat. He saw what the demon did to Dean.

“I’m sure,” Dean said. He coughed. “Whatever it was, it was demon bullshit, I promise.”

Dean stood, and he helped Sam up. They stayed linked like that for a beat too long before Dean let go, pacing around Sam, running a hand up and down Sam’s back. “What about you? She threw you around.”

Sam hissed, back muscles tensing up, spasming. He wanted to loosen them up but he couldn’t. The pain made him grit his teeth and he couldn’t give Dean a straight answer.

Still, Dean read him as clearly as ever. Dean’s business face came on, like when Sam broke his arm in fourth grade, and he led Sam over to an armchair in the corner of the study. Thank god no one had been home during this.

Sam moved like the tin man all covered in rust. Dean rubbed at his back, saying soothing bullshit, and Sam wished that was all it took to overcome a spasm. 

All it really takes is time, time and healing, so Sam forced himself to focus on the breathing exercises Dean was rambling through until the feeling faded, leaving a sensitive twinge.

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but his legs were stiff when Dean helped him up. He grunted with every movement. Dean snorted. “You’re like an old man.”

Sam’s face scrunched up. “Shut up.”

That only made Dean snort some more, looking so god damn self satisfied. He smiled over at Sam. The smile softened. “How you doin’?”

Sam did a small stretch. He winced. “Better.”

Dean nodded. “Good.” 

Sam started limping to the door but an arm on the small of his back stopped him. “Dean, I’m okay, I promise.”

Dean came around in front of him. “I know,” he said. “Can I just--”

Sam understood at the same time Dean lost his nerve and stepped away.

Sam’s heart went back to rabbitting. He stepped into Dean’s space. He searched Dean’s eyes. Behind the fear, he saw something there.

“I read your letters,” Dean whispered, his eyes going watery, squinting. His hand squeezed around Sam’s wrist. “I read all of them. I’m so sorry, Sammy, I’m so fucking sorry, I-” 

He kissed Dean at the same time Dean kissed him. 

It was real this time. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real.

Dean ended it quickly, cheeks pink, and he coughed as he stepped away, sending Sam a quick look before grabbing their things and heading out the door.

They drove in silence all the way home. Sam didn’t care. He was smiling so much his face hurt. Once they were home, he turned to Dean, still smiling, and Dean threw his arms out.

“I’m--I don’t have practice with this!” Dean croaked. He was red. “Just forget it--”

Sam walked Dean back against the wall. He held onto Dean and flipped their positions, grunting softly as his back hit the wallpaper. “Kiss me?”

Dean was still warring against something, but Sam’s pleading eyes were a deadly weapon, and it wasn’t long before Dean gave in and kissed him. Sam refused to let him go, wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck and keeping him close. Dean relaxed into the kiss, and they kept kissing, awkward, little, loving kisses, teeth clicking, and this was all Sam wanted from life.

Dean pressed against him, breathing heavily, burying his face in Sam’s shoulder. Sam ran his hands across Dean’s shoulder blades, feeling them trembling under his palms. “Sammy--” Dean was wrecked. This was wrecking him.

“Hey.” It was Sam’s turn to soothe. “Shh. It’s okay. Seriously.”

Dean looked up at him. “I’m supposed to do right by you. Take care of you.”

Sam bit his lip. “Then do it.”

There was so much pooling up in Dean’s eyes that Sam was having trouble keeping track. “That what you want?”

Sam nodded.

Dean nodded back. Something hardened in his gaze, a chest locked, the key thrown away. 

Dean held Sam’s face in his hands, looking at him like he was something precious and Sam couldn’t take that look, he didn’t deserve it, not after everything. He gave in when Dean kissed him, closed his eyes and ignored the world. Dean was his world. 

Dean’s body pressed closer and closer, Dean’s scent wrapping around him, and Dean choked a noise down Sam’s throat, his hips shifting forward, a hardness pressing against Sam’s leg.

Sam’s breath hitched. He’d been down this road and back so many times in the djinn dream, he’d worn the pads of his fingers into familiar grooves across the knobs of Dean’s spine, but it was like the first time all over again, senses heightened, reality so much sharper than a dream.

Sam twisted his hips so their cocks rubbed through denim. Dean made a wounded noise. His grip on Sam’s jaw tightened, fingernails digging little crescents into Sam’s skin. 

Dean pulled back and Sam held tighter. “Dean,” Sam whispered, and that was all it took.

They kissed in bites and nips and swiping tongues, hands set loose from chains that had held them back, and Sam’s touches wandered, relearning, but Dean was mapping Sam out from head to toe. Dean’s hands danced with reverence, gripping some places, petting others, slowly pulling Sam apart until he was shaking.

The kisses devolved into foreheads pressed against one another, breaths turning into pants, and Dean’s fumbling hands shoved their jeans and boxers down and oh, oh, oh. This first time was so much better than before. It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t supposed to be. It was real.

Sam didn’t have enough time to look, to touch, to categorize and whisper and reaffirm like he wanted to. He was reduced to rocking, erratic movements and little whines and whimpers, and though they didn’t find a perfect rhythm, Sam came from their desperate frotting, fast enough to make him blush, and Dean followed soon after. 

The djinn dream had always floated past the after, or romanticized it, but staring up at Dean with sticky lips and a ruined t-shirt and a softening cock was humbling, intimate, raw, in a way Sam wasn’t prepared for. He looked up at Dean and Dean went back to mother hen mode, helping Sam out of his shirt. 

They took turns in the shower. Sam put a new pair of sweat pants on.

When they were clean, when it was over, the room was still there, the world was still there, they were still there. And Sam didn’t want to float past anything ever again.

“Dean,” Sam said, and Dean looked over at him.

Sam smiled, a small, lopsided thing. “Wanna do that again sometime?”

That startled a laugh out of Dean. He shook his head like Sam had made an awful joke. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“That’s the plan.”

Dean looked over at Sam. “Why is this working?”

“Because it’s us.”

Dean blinked at that. They shared another weighted look before Dean’s stomach rumbled audibly. Dean put a hand on his belly. “Diner?”

Sam ambled over to his shoes. “Diner.”

And still, after all this, life tumbled on.

***

Things stayed new for a long time after that, and new routines were established, new looks, different from the ones from the dream, new boundaries, new touches, new Dean. The Dean in Sam’s head had been how Sam always imagined, but real Dean was different in ways that surprised Sam every time. They learned each other in and out, with awkward laughs and embarrassed groans and gross noises and weird kinks and arguments and mistakes and every single possible form of closeness and intimacy they could stumble into.

It was real. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t nice. 

It was good. 

Dean inside him was good. Dean’s stupid dirty talk was good. Dean’s inability to initiate was something to work on. Sam’s insecurity was something to work on.

And work on it they would.

They had the whole road ahead of them, and everything beyond that.

Sam wasn’t naive enough to say they’d be okay or that they’d live happily ever after.

But, for now, Sam held all the little pieces of the world in his hand and in his heart, and that was enough.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for coming along for the ride. Reading your comments throughout the last month and connecting with y'all has been a privilege.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, it means a lot to me! Hope y'all enjoy the ride!


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